Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- October 2, 2015 Edition

> The New York Times reported last week that print book sales are up, e-book sales are down, as readers "return" to the physical book. Huh.

> A photographer got bored, and went in search of the best writers in his state to shoot (on film). Luckily, he lives in Maine, otherwise known as Writertown, USA.

> Here's a fascinating interview (at Jane Friedman's excellent blog) with Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press, that ranges from traditional publishing to unusual ways authors and readers can connect, to...well, just about everything. (It's originally from 2014, but appeared then in the subscription-only web magazine Scratch; and it's all still--maybe more--relevant today.)

> If you like this kind of link round-up, check out Literary Links at the Masters Reviews blog.

> By now, it may be that every living personal essay writer (and reader and editor) saw, and possibly shuddered about this piece in Salon: "The First-Person Industrial Complex" which explores the price of revealing (sometimes squirm-worthy) private lives in public.

> There's a new interview at Literary Mama with my friend Candy Schulman, on the craft of essay writing. Candy's guest post here (from 2010!), explaining how the mind of a personal essay writer works, is still heavily trafficked.

> This week, Your Blog Connection featured yours truly, talking about how I try to make this blog helpful to other writers. 

> And if you want to add more online resources to your list, try this list of 120 "most helpful websites" for writers.

> Finally, at the Princeton Alumni Review, my boss at Montclair State University (where I sometimes teach a creative nonfiction course), offers a thoughtful and funny take on words that are frequently mistaken for one another, in "Diction Slips."

Have a great weekend!

Reminder - If you live in the New York City metro area, consider this Sunday's (10/4) first Manhattan show for This Is My Brave: 12 writers, poets, and singer-songwriters on the subject of living with mental illness. I've got a ticket giveaway going on at my post from earlier in the week with the founder. Click here (or scroll down one post) for details. Closes at 5:00 EASTERN time tonight, 10/2.

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - Lenore-M

Writers, Photos, Fear, and Me: Getting Back in the Picture

Perhaps you already know that about 7 weeks ago, after avoiding it for seven years, I finally had a new photo taken for professional use (there it is, at left!). I told the story about how I got over my photo fear in my Thanksgiving newsletter, and mentioned it on Facebook. 

What happened next surprised, intrigued, and in some ways saddened me: within hours, more than 50 individual emails, and dozens of Facebook comments from other (mostly female) writers, all described feeling the same dread of posing for a new photo. Clearly, we all needed a reality check.

Then in December, SheWrites, the wonderful web community, invited me to share the story, which includes this excerpt: 

...Recently, when asked for photos to accompany essays from my memoir manuscript, about the relationship I formed with my father after he died, I persuaded each editor that something else would be more interesting--me and Dad on my wedding day; him holding me as a toddler; an image of Las Vegas (where he'd retired).   

But I was delaying the inevitable. A month ago, an editor of a print magazine insisted. She suggested I stand in front of a leafy tree and snap a selfie, and while that appealed to my budget (one son in college, another heading that way), I knew I needed help to get camera-ready, a village, and that costs. Photography sitting fee. Make-up artist. A decent  haircut, coloring, style. Then, paying for the actual images.  

Then there were the emotional costs: Age, more weight gain, a neglected appearance, and a bitterness that a writer's physical appearance mattered. That my story might be judged, maybe before the words are even read, based on the size of my chins, my age, the fleshy contour of my cheeks, the width of my nose, the wrinkles around and the bags under my eyes. What did any of that have to do with the words, story, with writing?   

But pictures do tell stories. And the one I joked I'd use until I was 90, suddenly struck me as telling the wrong story. That woman no longer exists, in ways that please and pain me... 

You can read the full post over at SheWrites. I'd love it if you would chime in, either here in comments, or over there, with your own thoughts on the subject. Are you getting in the picture?