Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- June 20, 2014 Edition

Image: Windell Oskay/Flickr, Creative Commons

> At Writer Unboxed, Juliet Marillier explains what goes on in her (judge's) mind when she's reading through entries in a short fiction contest.

> If you've read my blog for a while, you've come across the name Richard Hoffman -- poet, fiction writer, memoir and essay writer. His second memoir, Love & Fury, is just out, and on the Mass(achusetts) Poetry blog, he talks about how he compartmentalizes his work across three genres.

> Is it ever a good idea to respond to an editor who sent you a clear and final rejection? No. No. And, no no no.

> Love reading about (and looking at) the spaces writers work in? Check out the series at Allyson Latta's blog, beginning with the most recent account and pics from Catherine Gildiner.

>  I knew only a few of these 13 Google search tricks that can make research easier for writers.

>  Recently a student, who had already established that he was a visual learner, needed more guidance on structuring personal essays, and I remembered this terrific article -- and its illustrations: Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide, by Tim Bascom, in Creative Nonfiction magazine last summer.

> When a writing coaching client says she is too busy to write on a given day, I encourage setting a timer for 15 minutes, then doing whatever can be done in that time -- write three new sentences, revise a short paragraph, make notes for tomorrow's scene, re-read yesterdays page(s), play with chapter titles -- similar to this tip on procrastination, from Psychology Today.

> If you find that one of your articles, blog posts, or other work has been posted online without your permission, you may need some of the tools and resources listed in this ASJA post.

> Finally, two not-so-new, but definitely worth reading posts. First, wouldn't it be fabulous if David Sedaris touted your book during his massively popular reading/appearance tour?  Yes -- and in a way, no.  And then there's Roxane Gay with 25 things to do and not do, to be a (kickass) contemporary writer. I added the "kickass" because she is.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, May 18, 2012 Edition

► The New Yorker's new blog, Page-Turner, offers "Criticism, contention, and conversation about books that matter."

► My morning walking buddy let me know that Anne Lamott was recently on Studio 360. You now have my permission to leave my blog and possibly never return...

► At the Knopf Doubleday YouTube page, the Writers on Writing series features 30-second insights from 28 authors, including Cheryl Strayed, Alexander McCall Smith, Isabel Wilkerson, Chris Bohjalian, and others. (via GalleyCat)

►In preparing for a mini-workshop last night, in which I would be talking about the segmented essay, I stumbled on "This is What the Spaces Say," from Robert Root.

►A many-times published novelist (who's been a midlist and a NYT best-selling author) shares some financial facts of the writing life.

► Finally, rethinking your writing space? For inspiration, check out this post at Metre Maids, where "Some ladies and this guy blog about poetry."

Have a great weekend!

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, June 10, 2011 Edition

►As the Iowa Writers Workshop turns 75, here's a peek inside, and what's new, what's better and what not to do there (think social media).

►Library Journal offers a roundup of links to posts with takeaways from Book Expo America, which was held in New York late last month.

►Do you spend big chunks of time quietly writing in an elegantly furnished room of your own, a lovely lakeside retreat, the lobby of a 4-star hotel? Nah, me either. And Nicole Cooley thinks it's better that way, and explains it all "In Praise of Ugly Writing Spaces."

►Two upstart site concepts: Freelancers are chattering about eByline and writers in search of agents and publishers are checking out Storiad. At both, writers post expertise and content, editors/publishers post needs/wants, and the two are meant skim one another's listings in the pursuit of assignments, sales and finding new projects/talent.

►This long piece -- featuring practical writing tips from 23 authors --is (mostly) in list form, so it's not such a long read.

►See if you can spot all the fat in the excerpt Michelle Seaton uses to show how much can be trimmed in her post about line editing, at the blog of Grub Street, Boston's wonderful writing center.

►Finally, I often feel like the only writer around who is not a yoga practitioner, but even I could appreciate yoga poses for writers, such as: "Cash-Your-Huge-Royalty-Check-Asana: This pose is actually for advanced yogis and I don’t really know how it’s done. You might try standing on your head."

Have a great weekend!

Less Time, More Words. A Writing Conundrum.

Recently I realized something I think I've known for a long time, but wanted to avoid admitting. Here it is: I get more writing done when I have less time to do it.

I suspected as much, but the other day while cleaning out a desk drawer, I came across months of calendar pages from 2006 and 2007 filled with appointments and to-do-lists, it occurred to me that back then I was generating a lot more words a lot more frequently AND had far less time to devote to writing. (Here, by the way, I'm talking about writing new material, writing that is not connected to a freelance assignment or client-contracted work.)

Now that I know this, I'm starting to figure out what to do about it. First up is spending less time at my desk, physically. Yes, Virginia, it's great to have a room of my own, but the truth is, the more I think desk/work, the less I want to write. (Edit, yes; critique student work, yes; handle submissions and marketing tasks, sure. Write? Not so much).

Looking over a bunch of my published work from the last few years, I recall how many of those essays and memoir pieces started with rough first drafts scribbled while I was on the bleachers at my kids' baseball game, in the car waiting for school to let out, in doctors' waiting rooms (my mother), on airplanes, in hospital coffee shops (my father).

I recall getting the bones of one piece down while in the tennis courts locker room because I'd inadvertently arrived early for a lesson. (Or maybe I was early on purpose?) Another piece started to come together in the ladies room during a sporting event I could have skipped were it not for the happy grins on the faces of my husband and sons when they asked me to go along. Still another I wrote under the shade of a lovely oak during a two-week run of soccer camp for 7 year-olds. (Yes, I do carry a notebook absolutely everywhere. Doesn't every writer?)

While I've always more or less believed, "When you need something done, ask a busy person," it didn't really sink in that this applied to my writing as well. Seems the more time I clear in my schedule for "writing time," and the more low level obligations I try to wiggle out of in order to write, the lower the word count at the end of the day. Partly, this is plain old fashioned procrastination. But it's also partly – or perhaps mainly – the way I operate as a writer. There's something about the perception that I'd better write it now or I won't have time later, which I think fuels my process.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going out now to do something that has nothing to do with writing, and I’m planning to get busy with a few other things that also have nothing to do with writing. I'm putting things back on my schedule I thought I should toss out in order to write.

Know what? I think I'll live a little. That way, being a nonfiction writer, I may actually have something to write about.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Everything But the Turkey

► A really wonderful collection of essays on the craft of nonfiction resides over at Narrative Digest, from the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

► Interesting piece at Salon about Ben Yagoda's new book, Memoir: A History, and how and why memoir has apparently taken over the literary world.

►Nancy Rawlinson had a recent post listing a bunch of useful links for those contemplating, enrolled in, or just curious about the value of, an MFA program.

► The Poetry of Food is a new place on the web to read and write about food, and don't let the name fool you; there's plenty of prose there too.

► At Stacked Up, successful writers show off and talk about their personal bookshelves.

► And finally, if you like Twitter and the avatars that live there, try this quiz.

Have a great weekend.

Writers' Houses, Cash Flow and the Geography of Creativity

And now, it's Mark Twain's house on the chopping block – maybe. Recently, it was Edith Wharton's house, also running out of funds. And so, I've been asking myself how much – and indeed whether – the houses of accomplished, revered writers matter. Is it important to keep them open for visitors, scholars, and tourists who have a vague recollection of having once read at least one of an author's great works or perhaps simply bored on a rainy vacation day and heeding the advice of a bed-and-breakfast owner?

I can recall being mesmerized, as a teenager, to be in Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon, but then I was equally awed standing over his grave marker. And had I known then how very little time The Bard actually spent in the Avon house, that he wrote mostly in boarding houses in dicey sections of London, I might have felt differently. Then again, I was awfully young.

When I travel, I do make an effort to stop in at any important writers' houses along the way, but usually only if they fall right in to my path; I can't say I make it an integral part of my trip, like a writer acquaintance of mine does. I don't keep track of which and how many I've seen and nor am I devoted to the pursuit, as others seem to be. But I've been wondering lately if either I've been remiss, if the place where a writer's most intriguing work happened is more important than I've yet to understand? Surely that must be partly true, or else those who are pouring selfless amounts of time and energy into raising funds to preserve writers' abodes are missing the point and I'm pretty sure they're not.

Does it matter – to history, to modern day writers, to literature in general – where a writer composed the best work of a career? And if it does, why? For inspiration? Motivation? To allow a deeper understanding of the writer's frames of reference? For the sheer good will toward literary arts generated by a well-preserved, revered site? These are all good and noble reasons, of course. I'm just not sure shrines are the right idea when it comes to promoting a healthy appreciation of literature among the general population.

Among writers, is place paramount? What do you think?

Some writers will tell you that where one works is incidental; that the place that matters, the one you need to be in, in order to write well, is the one you create in your own head. Others insist that one's writing space is all, that without their physical surroundings, the work of some of history's best writers would have gone nowhere.

There's a distinction I suppose between where one writes – an attic office, a corner of the basement, a shared studio away from home, on the 7:10 a.m.train, on the dining room table or edge of the bed – and the home a legendary writer has inhabited for a good chunk of their most productive writing years.

I saw Margaret Mitchell's tiny table and typewriter (always covered with a cloth when not in use) on a side wall of her extremely small apartment, when I visited Atlanta for a wedding a few years ago. It was at a time when I already had an unused bedroom in my house – a real room of my own -- to write in, but felt held back by the clutter, the proximity to my kids' antics, an older computer, a cranky radiator. Excuses, of course. Seeing Mitchell's "work space," I knew that what she was looking at when she wrote Gone With The Wind was hardly as important as the place she was at in her head.

A conversation with a noted memoirist not long after that convinced me that, while I could write anywhere, why not create inside my room (which hundreds of writers would no doubt be jealous of) a writing space that fed me? And so I did, tossing out boxes of detritus from my former work life as a public relations specialist, lining the walls with bookcases, upgrading my computer and -- closing the door. No writers will ever trek to my suburban colonial as they do to the homes of literary legends, but that's okay. It works for me. I even have a window with a nice view of my little neighborhood.

Which makes me think about where writers work as much more than a room; a writer's home is also about the rhythms of their household, the outside view, the milieu of their neighborhood, the social and cultural and historical nuances of their community and region, and the natural geography in which their particular house exists. Maybe for some, seeing where a writer sat while crafting a work you admire can translate – into inspiration, understanding, and a kinship. The creative process is still mysterious to me and the influence of place is something I don't quite understand myself. Why can I write most insightfully about my family when I am away from them? Why does being isolated for a writing retreat help coax essays with pages and pages of dialogue and a cache of characters?

I'm interested in seeing where writers lived, not so much because I think I'll learn some important insight that will make me a better writer, but simply because it's fascinating, often in a strangely ironic way, to see where anyone creates anything: The horror writer looked out on a placid farming vista. The author of romantic sagas had a cemetery out their back gate. The science fiction writer refused to move up from legal pads to an electric typewriter. The author of children's' books about animals barred pets from her writing nook.

But I'm equally entranced by visiting historic houses of the non-literary. The inventor of the telegraph machine which enabled Morse Code transmissions? His house revealed no more technological advances than any other house of the times, yet one has to wonder if perhaps the self-sufficient, closed world of his family's enclave, encompassing house, farm, and factory, fueled his desire to devise a way to move at least messages beyond the fences that bordered their hundreds of acres?



Do I think I'll be a better writer from walking the same floorboards as Twain or Wharton? No more than an amateur musician thinks they'll hit gold because they saw Graceland. But I still want to walk that floor, touch that desk, look out that window. And I can't precisely say why.

Still, it it hadn't landed in the pages of the New York Times, I probably wouldn't notice if the houses of some of America's most revered literary artists were, one by one, foreclosed, sold, turned into condos, or a pricey rehab center (all possibilities having been mentioned). Perhaps I should be embarrassed about that, but I also don't think I'm alone; unless one is a huge fan of a particular writer, the location, even the continued existence of their home, much less whether it's open for visitors, is probably unknown to you. And while I'd rather see these sites remain open, I'll probably be more likely, with my very limited funds earmarked for literary pursuits, to buy another book or book myself at another writing conference, rather than donate to the cause. Do I hope some deep-pocketed foundation or institution or individual more reverential or civic-minded than I saves these houses? You bet.

But I do wonder: Would all the time, energy, money and effort that would have to be poured into such a feat, do just slightly more good if it were targeted at getting people – not just writers – to read the works that were once written there?