Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Writing Process, Animals as Authors, Exclamations and More

• Interesting interview with rarely-interviewed author S.E.Hinton over at literary agent Nathan Bransford's always enlightening blog. One gem:

(Bransford): What is your writing process? Do you get it on the page and revise later? Outline? Plan ahead? Let the writing go where it goes?
(Hinton): I think I've tried every writing process there is, trying to find an easy way to write a novel. If I do find it, I'll publish it and retire. Sometimes I revise as I go. Once I used an outline. One time I thought in terms of movies and wrote scenes out of order, as they occurred to me, and stitched them together later. I wrote That Was Then, This Is Now, two pages a day and did almost no revision. I originally wrote Rumble Fish as a short story, did the novel, and threw that one away because it was too easy, and wrote it again with Rusty James as the narrator, which was not easy at all. The Outsiders was forty pages long, single-spaced, typed, in its first draft. The third draft was the one Marilyn saw. The only thing I am sure of in my "process" is that it involves a lot of staring out the window.
Read the entire interview here.

• Ahem. A web-based media internship going to the highest bidder? Nah, that just seems wrong, right? Wrong. The folks at the Huffington Post think it's okay, because it's for charity. What's next for HuffPo? Asking their (unpaid) bloggers to pay them for space?

• I don't have cats or dogs. I did have horses (five of them over 15 years), and although I'll admit I was smitten with Mr. Ed when I was a kid, I never really thought about writing anything in the voice of a pet. But apparently, many writers do. A student in one of my recent workshops, writing in the voice of her cat, got me thinking about it, and then I stumbled over the Pets and Their Authors blog, where pets "interview" their humans, who happen to be writers.

• If Elmore Leonard really meant it about exclamation points when he said, "You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose," then imagine what he'd think about this Guardian article and the (no, say it ain't so) resurrection of that questionable punctuation mark.

• Finally, one more item from across the pond. Britain crowns its first female poet laureate. Hear her roar.

Have a great weekend.

How are literary journals like other magazines?

One of my freelance editorial jobs is to gather and analyze news about the magazine industry for a trade newsletter, so I'm very familiar with (actually too familiar, more like overwhelmed and saddened by) the precarious state of magazines in the U.S. right now. Major titles have folded, more certainly will follow, and many publishers are instituting employee furloughs, shortened workweeks, pay cuts, and making severe reductions to editorial and sales staffs.

It's not quite as simple as online killing print (although of course that's part of it), but a much more complex set of circumstances – too many magazines chasing finite ad dollars; spiraling paper, printing and delivery costs; too-cheap subscriptions; low newsstand sales vs. high print runs; and many other factors. Bottom line, magazines need to find a better business model.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised to hear that the excellent literary journal The New England Review, published by Middlebury College, is facing the possibility of folding unless the journal can figure out a new way to fund their existence. We expect our literary journals to be more or less protected from the pressures consumer magazines face, but the recession isn't playing favorites.

Most lit journals are almost wholly dependent on university funding and/or grant support, and colleges are apparently now taking a harder look at their journals. Are they seeing only numbers rather than the value these books add to the literary world at large (and in many cases, to the prestige of their graduate writing programs)? For more about the NER's plight and that journal's intrinsic worth to Middlebury, see this thoughtful article in Inside Higher Ed.

I have subscriptions to only five literary journals – three of which exclusively publish creative nonfiction. Since I'd like to help support other journals, I've made it a practice to buy a copy of any issue in which a writer friend is published. It's not enough, but it's what I can afford and it assures that a supply of quality literary work moves through my house on a fairly regular basis.

I don't have any answers really for how literary journals can pay their own way. Publishing online only? Aggressively seeking private philanthropic underwriting? Throwing a rent party? Who knows. Perhaps, like in the consumer magazine market, there are just too many journals…or, maybe not enough. Maybe some new business model will emerge. I only know that eventually, it's readers, and supporters of the arts of all kind, and not only writers, who will suffer if titles like the New England Review don't survive.

Speaking of literary journals, two years ago, I had a really terrific Saturday in Manhattan meeting up with a visiting Canadian writer friend, on a gorgeous early summer day. We attended a group reading by editors and authors from a varied group of lit journals at the main branch of the NYC library (and then talked over a tasty lunch outdoors in adjacent Bryant Park).

The occasion was the Annual Lit Mag Marathon Weekend, which is scheduled this year for June 9 and 10. There will be numerous readings at the library, and for those who have never been inside this amazingly beautiful building, it's worth the trip just to walk through it -- slowly. Rounding out the event is a Literary Magazine Fair downtown at Housing Works Used Book Café, where it's going to be possible to leave with bulging bags of lit mags (price tag: $2 each) and still have money left over for a New York City-priced meal. Many editors will be hanging about at the shop, too, ready to chat.

Get Your Ghost(writing) Game On

Here's something of possible interest to out-of-work journalists, experienced freelance writers facing a recession-fueled lull, and writers who simply want another arrow in their editorial services quiver.

My friend Ellen Neuborne, an experienced ghostwriter or co-author of 11 books, is offering an online class, The Writer’s Guide to Ghosting. It's reasonably priced, and I know anyone who works with Ellen will be in good hands – she's disciplined, has a good sense of humor, and most importantly, knows her specialty -- period. Plus, she's a seasoned teacher and writing coach, former magazine editor, and well-published freelance writer.

Here's her nutshell description: The Writer's Guide to Ghosting is an online class designed for professional writers interested in breaking into this profitable specialty. Topics covered include breaking into the business, the mechanics of ghost writing a book, marketing yourself as a ghostwriter, contract and payment issues, and building a ghost writing pipeline.

The class begins June 1. For more info, email Ellen: eneuborne (at) aol.com.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Quindlen Quits, Conferences & PR for Writers, & Something I Wrote

• If I were a self-published author, I would check out the Self Publishing Online Conference, May 13-15, where all the basic sessions are free on the web, including a full day (Friday) devoted to marketing and publicity. In fact, even if I were a traditionally-published author (or soon to be one), I might drop in on Friday anyway, since publishing house PR budgets have been drastically slashed, and much of a book's success today depends on what authors can do independently to market their books and themselves.

• Anna Quindlen – essayist, Pulitzer Prize winner in the commentary division, former New York Times' Hers and Life in the 30s columnist and OpEd writer, and most recently, regular Newsweek columnist – was one of the reasons I first became interested in writing personal nonfiction. So I was understandably dismayed when she gave up her Newsweek column last week, citing a need to move aside for a younger generation of journalists.

Quindlen is only 56, and I for one, don't see her as anywhere near ready for retirement. Yes, she'll continue to write novels (she has several best-sellers on the shelf already), and undoubtedly she'll turn up on another major media venue before too long. I only wish she hadn't mentioned the age issue. Or maybe I am, as it puts a spotlight on the ageism issue in journalism and literary matters. And maybe her departure is not as voluntary as it first seemed, as this piece suggests, noting that the magazine is moving in a new (read: younger demographic) direction.

As for me, I'm solidly with Joanne123, a commenter at Newsweek who wrote: "Something is deeply wrong when the voices of one class of people must be silenced in order to make room for another." And I agree with AnnSent, who said, "Move on -- to greener pastures -- if you wish. Quit because the magazine makeover doesn't fit with your philosophy or goals. Quit because you're tired of bad news and brutal deadlines. Or brutal news and bad deadlines. Or the relentlessness of both. Or quit because you can. Because you want to write another novel. But not because you were eight years old when JFK was inaugurated."

• Novelists and short story writers in the Manhattan vicinity might want to consider the one-day 2009 Center for Fiction Writers Conference at the Mercantile Library on June 27. For the relatively low fee, you also get a space for one-month at the Center’s Writers’ Studio on East 47th Street.

• Writing about family is tricky; very often it's both the wheat and the chaff for the nonfiction writer attempting to craft interesting memoir and moving personal essays. It is for me. My memoir-in-progress, and most of my personal essays, would fall apart without the on-page characters to whom I am related off-the-page. They did not ask to be there, and yet as part of my life, they are part of my story, although my story of course is never their story.

One of my pieces, titled "Tip Not Included" (second place in the essay category of the Charles Simic Graduate Student Writing Contest a year or so ago), appears in the current edition of the journal Barnstorm. It's mostly about my father, and while he cannot let me know what he thinks, in my story, he approves.

Have a great weekend.

Self-Promotion 101 for Writers: Point Readers to Your Work. Check.

Time for a bit of shameless self-promotion. Since I do it rarely on the blog, I don't feel guilty about it one bit.


One of my personal essays is running in Skirt, a print and online magazine. This one's especially dear to me. Although it recalls a time in my life that was particularly painful, by looking at that period through a particular lens, I came to an understanding of an elemental truth beyond the current misery.


Here's the opening.....

When my first child, Sean, was nine months-old, I regarded myself as a failure at motherhood. My husband, Frank, would come in from work each day to find me at the kitchen table, sobbing. I would explain it all again: I am miserable. I am no good at this. I do not know how to be a mother.
I needed to know I could do something right. A quilt seemed like a worthy project. Systematic. Sequential. One square after another...

You can read the complete essay here on the Skirt! site.

Tomorrow, we shall return to our regularly scheduled (non self-promoting) programming. Thanks for reading.

Seven Habits of (Not Necessarily Highly) Effective Writers

So, I am preparing notes for a seminar this week on the subject of overcoming common obstacles to creating and maintaining a writing routine. As I look over my topic headings, I'm tempted to take a short-hand, back-handed approach. For example:

Finding Time to Write: If you can find time to do the laundry, watch TV, gossip, browse YouTube, and talk about how much you really do want to write, you can find time to write.

Writer's Block: Ever heard of plumber's block? Accountant's block? Knitter's block? Playoff-watching block? Golfer's block? Get over it. How? You write.

Quieting Your Self Censor: Find a fellow writer working in the same genre, someone more experienced, who will read your work and when necessary, use the word bullshit a lot. Listen. Rewrite.

Getting Support: Might not happen with those you want it from the most. Write anyway. Look elsewhere for support. Don't wait to find it.

Improving Your Writing: Write. Read. Write. Read. Write. Get instruction. Get feedback. Rewrite. Read. Rewrite. Read. Rewrite. Repeat as necessary.

Getting From Idea to the Page: Write the idea(s) down. Any time, any place, any idea. On a piece of paper. Or a screen. Voila.

Establishing a Writing Routine: Write, beginning today. Repeat tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. See a pattern here?

I don't mean to sound flippant. And of course, I won't say these things to anyone who is interested enough in writing to come to a seminar about forging a creative writing habit. It's not as if I think the answers to these real writing dilemmas are quite so simple or obvious. They're not. Each and every writer, or would-be writer, or wannabe writer, or tentative writer, has to figure much of it out solo. Writing is the ultimate in on-the-"job" training. For the new writer, of course, there is a lot of value in listening to advice from those a bit, or a lot, further down the road. So I'm planning to offer lots of ideas, options, suggestions, tips and alternatives. I want to help as many people who want to write, to get writing.

Still, I find myself thinking that what I really want to say – and maybe I can find a diplomatic, encouraging way to do so – is, don't make more of this than it is. Don't romanticize writing. Or put it in the category of some mystical communion that only happens between muse and channel, some mysterious other-wordly thing to which only select individuals have access. Of course there is some of that. But only a very little of that. And only sometimes. And mostly, not when you desperately want it to materialize. Mostly the recipe is this: Read. Write. Learn the craft. Repeat. That recipe won't necessarily make you a great writer. But if your "problem" is that you can't get started, or feel blocked, or wonder if can write anything at all, the recipe holds up.

I'll have lots of handouts and will talk for an hour about creating the time and the mental and physical space to write. About finding writing organizations and conferences and online resources. About writing prompts and writing exercises and books for writers. About the value of writing groups and attending readings and getting feedback. About some routines, habits, and tricks that work for accomplished writers when they have trouble putting words on the page. I hope it all helps.

But then I wonder if I should tell the attendees: You can go home and think about all of it and read all of the handouts for an hour. Or you can write for an hour.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Bookfests, Book Marketing, Books in NJ, and Going Bookless?

• Check out this funny "syllabus" in McSweeney's, by Robert Lanham, on writing and reading in the "postprint era."

• Authors and other book folks in northern New Jersey might want to see about getting involved in BooksNJ 2009 coming up in June.

• A few (new-to-me) online lit journals I've stumbled across and enjoyed recently: Litter Box, Stone's Throw (with an essay by my friend Harriet Brown), and something unusual (hint: keep those envelope backs, folks): Hit and Run, "publishing the raw materials of fiction, poetry and other creative work: scrap metal; index cards; napkin notes; etc."

• Walter Boyer is co-owner of the dominant independent bookstore Bookends, in Ridgewood, NJ, not far from where I live. The store is known for celebrity author appearances, but also puts on its share of lesser-known author events. Boyer is interviewed in the latest Bookhitch newsletter (which by the way always delivers a bunch of smart book marketing ideas). Here's a small part of his response to a question about what he looks for when asked to schedule an event for a newly published author:

"Since we’re talking about relatively unknown authors, I prefer a detailed email including a bio of the author, a bio of the book, a picture of the jacket, and a publicity plan, or a marketing outline. With an unknown or first-time author, a lot of what they do to market themselves is what determines the success of a book signing. I want to know what they are doing already, before the signing is even proposed, to market themselves and their book. I want to know what kind of following they have now. It’s a challenge, and you cannot expect success without the author’s involvement in publicity."

It looks like the current (April) newsletter content is not yet up on the Bookhitch site, but you can sign up for the electronic newsletter here.

• Wish you were at the London Book Fair recently? Then enjoy this vicarious visit.


Have a great weekend. Don't forget to write.*


* I say this all the time, with a smile, to my writing workshop students and even to writers whose essays, manuscripts, synopses, book proposals and other works I'm editing or critiquing. They think I'm being funny. I'm not. I know firsthand how easy it is to "forget" to write, though it's often cloaked in other wording: too busy, too tired, blocked, stuck, burned out, overworked in the day job, uninspired, muse-less, etc. So I'll say it again: Don't forget to write.


And, have a great weekend too.

Writing & Editing Blogs & Tips, Author Events & the Metaphor Gauntlet

I've decided to spare you all from my planned post today about how reading poetry has helped my nonfiction writing. (Maybe I'll get back to that next week.) Meanwhile, I noticed my lists of links and interesting things to share has gotten too long. So here goes:

• There are so many blogs over at NYTimes.com, it's difficult to keep up with the half-dozen or so I really like. When I'm in a word geek mood – or when something I'm editing makes me want to throttle someone – I head over to After Deadline, which "examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times." Yes folks, I actually find that sort of thing entertaining.

• Not as nimble with metaphors as you'd like? I like this advice, from novelist Lisa Michaels, via the Write Free newsletter:

Take one of your missed opportunities, one you feel is crying out for metaphor, and Throw Down the Gauntlet. Give yourself two minutes to delve into that part of your brain that's creative and juicy, and fill a page with possible metaphors for that passage. You might have a moon that's rising over the eastern ridge. Set your timer and go, barring none: "The moon is a . . ." . . . "golden pocket watch," "white crystal of snow," "full circle," "round cherry pie." Just go until you find one you like. If too many minutes pass and you've exhausted your possibilities, give it a rest. Come back to it later. You may find you like one you've already written, or you may want to try again.

• The self-publishing industry has planned its first major national book expo for this fall.

• There is a deep archive of fiction writing advice and tips at Casting The Bones, a blog maintained by screenwriter/novelist Robert Gregory Browne, who seems genuinely interested in helping aspiring novelists.

• Creative nonfiction is the subject of No Titles, which is "what happens when a blog meets a literary magazine," according to the site. Lots of interviews with accomplished practitioners of the craft, including this one with Dinty Moore.

• I live an "easy" commute from Manhattan, and each month make a list of the literary events I plan to attend in the city. Then what usually happens is one kid's important game conflicts with a reading; another kid's important school project is due the morning after an authors' panel; both kids get sick the day of another….until one by one, all of the alluring literary outings get crossed off the calendar until there is often only one left. One month soon, I'm going to make sure that the one I get to is the reading series sponsored by PenParentis, "a confluence of authors who are parents." It would be all too ironic if I didn't, no? Their next After Work Reading Series, on May 12, features Jonathan Henkin and Joanna Hershon. (I'm pretty sure they don't always pair authors with identical initials, but hey, it does have an interesting ring to it.)

Be back tomorrow with some more.

Literary Journal Subscription Winner

We have a winner.

Congratulations to Bonnie Naradzay, a poet and fellow Stonecoast MFA alum, who is now the recipient of the one-year subscription to the literary journal Prairie Schooner.

Bonnie's name was chosen at random by my very high tech in-house random selector, otherwise known as an 11-year-old who reached into a bowl filled with folded up pieces of paper on which I had written the name of each commenter from the two Prairie Schooner posts we ran.

Thanks to all who entered and have a great weekend.

Guest Blogger Susan Lilley on Delicious Truth: A Poet in Nonfiction Land

Susan Lilley has a fine literary bio and I'll get to it. But first, something about Susan her terrific bio doesn't say. When thrown into the mix of genres, personalities and possibilities in an MFA program, it's easy – and wrong – to dismiss entire groups of people and ideas in order to focus intently on one's interests (in my case, creative nonfiction). Lucky for me, during my MFA experience, among the wonderful (and patient) faculty and students from other specialties, was poet Susan Lilley, whose outstretched hand and genuine interest in connecting across genres made a real difference. She's a gem both off and on the page.

Okay, now the facts: A Florida native, Susan is the 2006 co-winner of the Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest for Florida poets for her collection, Night Windows. She's a 2009 recipient of a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, and her work has appeared in anthologies and journals including The Florida Review, The Apalachee Review, The Fourth Genre, and Poet Lore. Susan has taught literature and writing at the University of Central Florida, currently teaches at Trinity Preparatory School, and is an adjunct professor at Rollins College. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast at University of Southern Maine

Please welcome Susan Lilley.

When I had the chance to be part of a cross-genre workshop last summer during my MFA graduation residency, it made sense to me that poetry and nonfiction should be paired together. After all, don’t my poems usually start with true-life experience? Many times I have wondered if a certain poem or another really should be allowed to grow into an essay, but usually ended up cutting back instead of pushing outward, distilling further instead letting loose the tide of information and detail that would surely overwhelm me if I dared to consider the subject more fully--and in prose.

But I followed the orders of our master class leader, poet Kazim Ali, and wrote one piece in the other genre to put before the group, all women of rich and skillful experience in the craft of creative nonfiction. They did the same, and their brave and lovely poems convinced me that poetry is indeed closer to CNF than it is to fiction. And the poetry I found in their prose—such moments of dazzling lyricism and liberating (sometimes shattering) honesty! They also blessed me with special insights on tone and the overall shape a poem takes for a reader. With less emphasis on line breaks and other nuts and bolts of a poetry workshop, I was able to see my work through a different kind of literary reader’s eyes.

Mostly, I was in awe of these writers’ commitment to courageously telling the truth. I began to wonder; as a poet, don’t I tell the truth? It’s complicated. My friend Ruth Foley, a poet, reminds me of this complication in every email with a quotation from Cocteau that appears as her signature: The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

I hadn’t fully realized how much I depended on the liberty, in poetry, to speak emotional truth by making stuff up. Sure, I start with the truth. Then as I work on a poem, if things are going well, the piece begins to have needs of its own, which I now must pay more attention to than the facts. Sometimes people are surprised or feel cheated when they learn that there are a few big fat lies in one of my poems they just read or listened to. (“You mean you did NOT eat the poison berries in your grandmother’s garden?” “What? That wasn’t you who had that fight and roared off in the silver car?”*)

In trying to produce a viable piece of nonfiction, I found that I constantly had to restrain my natural urge to change, replace, embellish along the way. And I developed even greater respect for the writers of nonfiction who stick to the facts while still shaping a riveting piece of writing. I am not saying that poetry is full of bald-faced lies. Some of life’s most ineffable truths are best illuminated in poetry, I believe.

Lately, it’s clear that the once-reliable division between poetry and nonfiction is turning into a delicious, messy shoreline. The concept of the lyric essay is exciting for those of us looking for new ways to think about writing. Some subjects lure me to explore the edges, where one genre spills into another and becomes a new element. I hope I’m brave enough to wade in.

Note from Lisa: C'mon in, Susan. The water's fine.

Readers, to enjoy one of Susan's poems, The Endless Boogie, click here. She swears every word is true.
* Susan has also allowed me to post below more of her work, this one from Night Windows (Yellow Jacket Press 2006; originally published in The Florida Review). She's not saying how much of this one springs from real life.

A Woman and Her Car

Gone. Gone in a blaze of red tail lights
and dust, that’s me,
dust swirling on the dirt road.
Better than horses, it roars—
my ally, weapon,
partner in crime.
Helps me say, “I’m leaving,”
and really do it,
floor it.,
miles in minutes.

There’s no sense in running after me.
So you don’t.
I exceed the limit,
but I won’t be stopped.
Patrolmen look into their coffee
when I streak by.
They, too, are terrified of angry women;
they don’t want to know why.
But my car is not afraid,
my chariot of fury,
my dented silver beauty!
My demons are released in little screams
with every curve.

Later, I’m back in your driveway
honking brazenly for forgiveness,
car idling nonchalantly beneath me.
I put on lipstick in the rear view
while I wait for you,
my laughter spilling out
through eyes washed blank with happiness.