Friday, June 26, 2009

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Tech Tasks for Writers, Literary Roads not Taken, Poetry in NJ, Memoirs & More

This list, found at the 10,000 Words site (“where journalism and technology meet) is designed to keep recent journalism school graduates busy sharpening skills while job hunting. But I think it’s even better advice for anyone who graduated from J-school more than ten years ago (uh, that would be me). I groaned at some of the suggestions, but by tackling at least half, I’ll be more valuable to future editors and clients in any area of media or literary life. And I might add, it wouldn’t hurt any newly (or soon-to-be) published authors to try their hands at these skills for the sake of savvier do-it-yourself book marketing.

• Some rare literary insight over at Daily Finance: the career road not taken, tweaked for writer types.

• Working on a To Be Read list for summer? If memoirs are of interest, this list of 50 suggestions might be useful, from Library Journal, where I often find gems, and not just about libraries.

Crowd-sourcing a book. Hmm.

• I live in New Jersey. (Yes, not far at all from those hideous Bravo housewives, but please, hold the condolences.) When people ask where in New Jersey I live, I say Montclair. Not because it’s true, but because almost everyone has heard of Montclair, the urban-like suburb, known for its racial-, social-, cultural- and economic-diversity, the liberal little cityburb full of literary types, media elites, artists and low-key celebrities, a hip hamlet with a thriving downtown, nightlife, and direct 30-minute train service to Manhattan. The tiny obscure town where I live, which borders Montclair? None of the above. Now, it looks as if Montclair has a good chance to be the new home of the Dodge Poetry Festival (the largest poetry event in North America), which is vacating its usual venue some 20 miles west.

• Write Young Adult fiction? Eileen Cook’s blog will be of interest, and be sure to check out her link list to find more blogs of YA (and other) authors.

• Read these Five Common Flaws of Memoir Projects. Actually, it’s not all about you.

• If you are on Twitter (like me @LisaRomeo) and you are a magazine junkie (again, me), and you want to add some magazines to your Twitter feed, you might find want to check this out.

Have a great weekend.

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