Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, December 21, 2012 Edition

> My well-read friend Chris led me to BookDrum, where one could spend hours. The beautifully rich site offers a panoramic experience of all that surrounds a book. I'm not explaining it very well. From the site: "..companion to the books we love, bringing them to life with immersive pictures, videos, maps and music."  Plus author background, film notes, reviews, summary, setting info, glossary, more. Visit. Click on a book (classics to contemporary). Don't look at the clock.

> Vaughn Roycroft on "Surviving the Full Force of a Manuscript Critique" at Christi Craig's blog.

> Lee Gutkind at the New York Times Draft blog, on "Three R's of Narrative Nonfiction." 

> Jenny Rough contemplates writers, perseverance, struggle and faith.

> California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera , with a Poem for Newtown, "Little Ones We Carry You" (and several response poems), at the University of California/Riverside news site.

> Meghan Ward on "20 Great Places to Publish Personal Essays."

> BookPatrol with a great graphic and the good news that America's largest libraries are growing.

> Annie Evett on why it's a good idea to keep calm and just keep submitting.  I like her math.

> I knew I wanted one for myself, but I'm not completely sure for whom I bought four more copies today of Anne Lamott's slim new book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.  Like this interviewer, I'm attracted I guess to the idea of an irreverent approach to the simplicity, and power, of praying as a personal, possibly idiosyncratic act.

> Reminder: Don't let your writing year end without creating at least a few entries -- on paper, in your head -- for your personal 2012 * I Did It List* (which I explain in the post immediately prior to this one).

> Finally, for some levity,  a compilation of poorly worded, proofread-by-dummies, hilarious or embarrassing real headlines over at Freakonomics.

Have a great weekend, and good wishes for those celebrating holidays.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for writers, readers, geniuses, and people like that

►Advice, tips, and seminar round-ups from the Writer's Digest's conference, The Business of Getting Published, held last weekend in New York City, are gathered here.

►Contemplating a city without free public libraries is terrible enough. And somehow, that city being Philadelphia, historic home to many publishing initiatives, it was even worse to consider. Massive budget shortfalls in the Pennsylvania state budget meant this was slated to occur on October 2, but fortunately letters, pressure, and special legislation eventually prevailed.

►In case you're not caught up with the week's news, the MacArthur Foundation announced its 2009 list of Genius Grant recipients – individuals from various disciplines each receive half a million bucks, no strings attached, just to continue being creative in their respective fields. Literary names include Edwidge Danticat, Deborah Eisenberg, and Heather McHugh.

►I'm happy to know that The New Yorker is going to be exempt from the mandate apparently issued this week to all other Conde Nast magazines to cut expenses by 25 %. I'm a fan of TNY, and want to see it thrive. And I understand that most literary endeavors need funding not tied to profits to survive. Still, I keep hoping someone – and the folks at CN seem massively qualified – will one day work out a way to both support literature in a mass-market publication and be fiscally successful, too. Meanwhile, Go Remnick!

►Speaking of magazines, Web Designers Depot compiled some of the most controversial magazine covers of all time. Agree with the choices? [update: broken link here has been fixed.]

►Attention MFA students, alumni and faculty: What do you think MFA students should expect (demand?) from a program? Erika Dreifus is collecting opinions about this over at her Practicing Writing blog.

►Shelf Awareness bills itself as "daily enlightenment for the book trade." I'd say it's an interesting destination for anyone interested in books, period. My favorite feature is the daily run down on which authors are slated for TV appearances that day.

►At The Rumpus, in a review of Jill McCorkle's new short story collection, Going Away Shoes, Skip Horack notes: "Writers who are able to make us laugh out loud are often viewed with unjust suspicion, as some readers seem to fear that humor is somehow “unliterary,” that what makes us laugh cannot also be profound. That’s nonsense, of course, and the dark humor contained in these stories testifies to what Shakespeare knew well: that humor has the power to expose as much about our struggles and our pains as it does about our triumphs and our joys."

►I'm a sucker for anything British. Don't know why and no longer care. I just go with it. So I'm enjoying a new blog find for all the reasons any procrastinating activity ought to make one both giddy and guilty. It's written by a British author of young adult novels, and she's long winded, funny, honest, a bit crude, no-nonsense but also whimsical, and loaded with Britishisms some of which I still can't puzzle out. She calls herself "crabbit". Just read her and you'll get that one. Start with the recent post, Why Do I Write At All?"

Have a great weekend. Laugh.

When all Writers are Welcome. Then what?

I do the occasional gratis talk or presentation about creative writing at libraries, community centers, and other places. There is no money in it, the audience will be small (usually about a dozen folks), and it takes as much of my time and mental energy to prepare and present these talks as it does to do so for a (paid) class or seminar. But I have my reasons.

Recently, I gave a talk at my local library titled, Creative Writing: Making it Stick, and promised to talk about developing a writing habit, motivation, process, writers block, the art of rewriting and other topics which frequently derail the newer writer, the writer without benefit of a writing group, and the writer who is not sure whether what they are doing can even be called writing. Fourteen people registered and nine arrived on a rainy Monday morning for the 90 minute session.

I asked participants to talk about what they were working on and what was holding them back in their writing endeavors.

Participants one and two: a 40-years-married couple, recently retired.
Husband: At my brother's funeral, everyone was laughing their heads off during the eulogies because my brother was such a funny guy. I thought, I should write this stuff down, maybe write a book of stories about all the funny things he did and said.
Wife: We started working on it together and it's fun. He dictates and I record it, then we go over it together.
They asked great questions which opened up a lively and rich discussion: "How can I make sure anyone will want to read about someone else's life? What makes a personal story interesting to others?" They took notes. They stayed after the session ended and asked more questions. I got a terrific sense that this was not going to be one of those retired couples who drive one another around the bend. On the way out, they checked out a book about writing and a memoir of short humorous essays. I saw them holding hands on the way to their car.

Participant three: Retired paralegal with decades years of hilariously unlikely observations about life in that otherwise stuffy industry. She needs organizational help, wants to shed her tendency to write it right the first time, and thinks she hasn't got time to write an entire book anyway. She's visibly intrigued over a few relatively routine writing suggestions I make about how to get a first draft down on paper (and why it's okay for it to be so awful her former attorney boss would have fired her for producing anything quite so crappy), how to turn some of her otherwise off-limits time into writing time, and my suggestion that she group her stories according to theme or decade or situation. Few things measure up to the feeling of seeing light bulbs go on in the eyes of anyone who has come to you for help.

Participant four: Someone who took one of my creative nonfiction classes last Fall. She has the personal essayist's quiet gift for the telling detail. Her short pieces about life in the 1940s, and today, are exquisite charms. I've encouraged her to write more. She arrives with a bulging notebook, questions about revision, and that look. You know that look? The one which says, everything I take in, everything I see, think about and observe, is getting filed away and may show up somewhere, sometime, on the page. That look which says I'm listening, but I’m also already somewhere else, way inside my head, working with words, playing with phrases, intrigued by ideas. I love that look in a writer. One day I feel certain I will be reading her pieces somewhere other than at the library. Or maybe not; she is not so much interested in publication, as much as she is excited about working on her craft (huzzah!).

I like to think I helped at least that particular group of writers that morning. But maybe not Participants Five, Six and Seven, though: the grumbling old gentleman who wanted to talk (and talk and talk) about his poetry (any why he refuses to write it down); the woman who writes archly conservative political rants and felt ill treated when submitting to newspaper editors; and the self-published author of four romance novels hoping I could to interest an agent.

It had said on the flyer for the class, all writers welcome. And while it was fleetingly tempting to pass over the demands of this second group, I take it as a challenge to find something to offer everyone. So at the end of the session, I invited the elderly man to recite one poem – and he had us all laughing and nodding. I suggested to the political writer that she research right-leaning websites and tossed out the names of two to get her started. As for the romance writer, I directed her to a few agent resource sites and advised against sending copies of all four books along with her cover letter.

Sometimes, even weeks or months later, I hear from participants, which is almost always terrific (except when they ask me to edit 50 pages for free). But mostly, silence is okay too. I just take it to mean they are all busy writing. That may be just an illusion I use to keep myself going. That's okay too.

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.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out (Late. Again. Shrug.)

I must remember to post this on Fridays, because Saturday Fridge Clean-Out wouldn't be very alliterative, would it? Okay, here's my round-up of some of this week's web finds:

► GOOD magazine has a new blog Signature, about books.

► At the Shifting Careers blog (on the NYTimes site), Michelle Goodman had a lot to say about working for free. Not that writers would know anything about that.

► Attention all grammar geeks: get thee to the Times Topics Grammar page.

► And see what you think of Jacket Copy, the book (and more) blog at the LA Times.

► I just (barely) am getting the hang of Twitter. And now I'm told it's time to Plurk. Think I'll pass. Distractions are not a writer's friend.

Note: "Both!" -- The only way to answer when your 10-year-old asks, while at the library and holding up two books, "Which one should I get Mom?"