We know that the point of this New York Times Sunday Styles piece on N+1 editor and author Keith Gessen wasn't supposed to be about the fact that he is obsessed with checking his Amazon.com ranking. Though it's nice to know that even good-looking, 33-year-old Harvard graduates who live in Prospect Heights, helm their own literary magazine, and have a book out that's earned its fair share of praise and attention also have moments of paralyzing insecurity. Gessen told reporter David Itzkoff that more people who viewed the page for his first novel, All The Sad Young Literary Men, bought Sloane Crosley's best-selling essay collection I Was Told There'd Be Cake than they did his book. Oops!

After exposing Gessen in a way that will likely have a good portion of New York's literary circles snickering, Itzkoff veered off and got Gessen to talk about themes and issues in publishing that we've been pissed off about for awhile now. We applaud the fact that Gessen is trying to taking risks with his magazine. At first we didn't think his novel sounded very risky at all. The very mention of it bored us. Then we read this:

The book is also a further unpacking of Mr. Gessen’s personal philosophy on the proper function of the novel: to hold up an honest mirror to society, no matter how frivolous and unserious that society may be. Young people in big cities like New York, Mr. Gessen said: “are willing to acknowledge that they’re a class only ironically. So they’ll have their ironic kickball games. Their ironic magazines.”

And that struck home. Immediately, we remembered how risky we thought Diane Vadino's Smart Girls Like Me was (incidentally, she was part of the whole McSweeney's crew). Vadino was inspired by her own situation, and the lifestyles of young, middle-class urban youth as she lived it. We believe it really is important to hold up an "honest mirror," and when elder critics get up on the soapbox screaming about how terrible it is to write about such non-serious subjects, we want to laugh. So while we admit we were bored with the idea of All The Sad Young Literary Men, we have given ourselves a proverbial slap on the wrist for skipping to the same ridiculous conclusion. The piece continues:

 “They’re willing to have the privileges of their class,” Mr. Gessen added, “to go to a good college, and be subsidized in their New York lives by their parents, but maybe not willing to be written about.”

The result, Mr. Gessen said, is that the everyday lives of young urban adults are no longer considered appropriate subjects for ambitious novels.

That last bit is what drives this whole notion forward. It's so easy for people to write off a good book simply because its subject matter isn't considered "appropriate" for "ambitious" novels. Isn't that what makes writing one of them, and making it good, such a huge coup, and such a worthy challenge?

4/28/2008 1:13:57 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

One of PopSerious's correspondents was at a lecture at Columbia University yesterday, where writer Zadie Smith (White Teeth) gave a lecture on "Feeling Fraudelent." Below, some wise words by the author. We love this kind of thing. So far, the best advice about writing we ever got was "Sometimes you just have to puke over the side and keep rowing." This is close competition:

On the subject of finishing a novel (or for those writers out there squeamish about the N-word, “a piece”), Smith said you should “step away from the vehicle.” Put it in a drawer. Do not publish it–-do not even read it–-until you absolutely have to. The most important reader of your work is not yourself who has written it, or an editor who has seen ten drafts of it already, but a complete stranger, and if you can keep the thing in a drawer long enough chances are that you’ll become that stranger yourself.

3/26/2008 1:54:51 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Hell to the yes. "Fine Lines," the newish Friday feature at ultimate lady-blog Jezebel just keeps getting more and more delish. The past fortnight showcased two of our especial YA favorites: The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger and Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Read them both, then come back to us, if you choose. YA-Rant Alert!


We own almost every single Danziger book. We bought most of them used at garage sales or from that Scholastic book-buying catalog thing they always had once a month at our school (which furnished most of our youthful library! when the books came it was like nerd holiday and birthday all in one!). Cat is probably our pet Danzinger tale, mostly because it's written about an outcast from the perspective of said outcast, it never gets overly precious, it's raw and honest and lonely and real, and shit, Marcy is a total card! What a hidden firecracker!

So yes, we adored her in Cat, but then suddenly we found ourselves SERIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED in Danziger for turning Marcy's whole life story around in an unpleasantly cliched manner. The sequel novel about our girl, There's a Bat in Bunk Five, catches us up to Marcy about a year later: she's lost a ton of weight, is suddenly pretty (no more awkward adolescence at 15? how nice for her!), and scores one of the cutest, wittiest, guitar-playing dudes at the artsy fartsy camp Ms. Finney and her hot, bearded husband run instead of teaching English to ungrateful public school kids. Phew. It's like -- what gives? One of the things that was so wonderful about Cat is that at the end, everything doesn't turn out to be 100%! And that's cool! Because newsflash! Not every social wallflower BLOSSOMS LIKE A LOVELY DELICATE FLOWER in two seconds after their phsycial appearance changes for the better. Duh! It's just upsetting. We felt as though something was STOLEN FROM OUR HEARTS after we read Bat. The worst part? Yes, we were jealous of Marcy! When we were supposed to be relating to her! What happened?!


On the other hand, The Witch of Blackbird Pond always satisfied and freaked us out to the nines every time we read and read and reread it in middle school. So delicious! Such a perfect teen precursor to our beloved Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, the sort of haunting romantical coming-of-age mystery creep-fest that makes life worth living! Kit, dear, headstrong Kit, is flawed -- and yet -- she's all fierceness and fabulosity. Old Hag has her totally figured out: she screws up, but we can't help but love her to pieces by the end. Plus, the Purtians! Connecticut colonial wilderness! Crippled Mercy and her big blue eyes! Boys in breeches! Sharp-tongued Nat! CONSIDERING the idea of marrying simply to get out of doing back-breaking housework! Oh, god. Where, oh where, is that Scholastic book catalog when we need it? Or a used bookstore? Or a library? We want tea and old books, now, forever, yesterday.

2/26/2008 4:02:48 PM by Sharon | Comments [4] |  

Okay, we feel badly for calling out Jezebel about the whole bitter thing -- it's not all the time! it's just about certain stuff! and we understand how they feel because excessive shallowness is annoying! -- but anyway, we are kissing their collective bums over this Friday Fine Lines feature that they've been running for the past while. We've been meaning to tell you about it but neglected to because we have a lot of trouble concentrating on Fridays. So each week, Lizzie Skurnick reviews and discusses the YA books beloved to most girls in their youth. It's the-next-to-most-delicious-thing other than actually sitting down and rereading them. Today's feature is about the brilliant Katherine Patterson's Jacob Have I Loved, which we totally forgot after our recent revived obsession with Judy Blume yet is absolutely one of our favorite, favorite, FAVORITE YA's of all time. How amazing is that cover. We can't even talk about it. LOUISE WAS TOTALLY THE PRETTIER SISTER. We really want to stop off at the BPL, hustle up to the kid's section, borrow it, take it home, and cry about it all weekend. Our heart breaks.

2/1/2008 5:11:37 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Oh, we love oddly theme magazine issues. MediaBistro's GalleyCat alerted us to the fact that the literary magazine Barrelhouse is seeking your best roller derby writing for an upcoming issue. Some details to bear in mind:

Barrelhouse wants: "Fiction, essays, poems, whatever you got. Barrelhouse will select one winner who will receive original art created by Cory Oberndorfer, a genuine roller derby artist. Finalists will be published in our Very Special Roller Derby Section, which will be included in our next print issue."

Barrelhouse will give: "The one we like best (aka, "The Winner") will recieve original artwork from Cory Oberndorfer, who creates (among other things) roller derby related art. Cory's piece will take it's inspiration from your work. This essentially means that you will become immortalized in two formats: your roller derby writing will appear in the pages of Barrelhouse, and will also be celebrated in or serve as inspiration for Cory's work. Which will also be the cover of the next issue of Barrelhouse. So essentially we're offering to make you a stone cold Mona Lisa style roller derby literary god or goddess whose roller derby writing will live on for all eternity. Other stuff that we like will appear in the Very Special Roller Derby Section, thus making it's authors a form of lower deities."

Barrelhouse asks: That your submission be spanking-new! "Sorry, no previously published work" will be accepted.

Go here for more submission info and further details. Literary Derby Dames, take note!

1/29/2008 4:09:10 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

I just finished Diane Vadino's amazing debut, Smart Girls Like Me, last week. In preparation for the review I've been assigned to write, I Googled around and found her also-amazing and mouth-wateringly delicious fashion-and-shopping blog, Bunnyshop. (Bookmark. This. Now.) For a few days, I've been thinking about all the things I adore about Smart Girls while trying to figure out a way to discuss and justify the fact that it's packaged in a baby-pink cover with a picture of a rack of designer clothing. Because, you know.

What I couldn't understand was why I was forcing myself to care. A good book is a good book is a good book, even if the jacket art suggests something that will probably result in many incorrect snap-judgements. Because while Smart Girls is being marketed toward girls who love In Her Shoes and The Devil Wears Prada, it isn't anything like either of those novels. It's kind of like the fake-Chanel necklace I was staring at on the Forever 21 website today. I'm going to buy it, and I'm going to love it, and wearing it is going to make me exceedingly happy. Still, there will always be someone out there with the real Chanel necklace who thinks I'm a varnished fool. Oh well?

Earlier today, I was catching up on GalleyCat when I found this posting, "Don't Let the Pink Cover Faze You." It establishes just why Smart Girls is neither chick-lit nor "trick-lit," Seth Godin's lit-term-of-the-month.

Trick-lit, according to Godin: "A chick-lit novel that pretends to be something else, hoping to rope people in with an interesting premise. 30 pages later, you discover that you were deceived, that it's just another piece of genre trash." Godin's definition kind of makes my skin crawl. Like, God forbid someone recommends a novel is of a lighter fare than James Joyce! You've been completely HAD! Alert The Paris Review! Have David Remnick revoke this person's library card IMMEDIATELY. Tell NANOWRIMO! They shouldn't be allowed to participate anymore. I could keep going, but I won't.

I'm glad that GalleyCat brought this up, and I think I can write my review now. Perhaps more people will read Smart Girls and realize how lovely and good it is, and that sometimes the best writing can be a story about friendship and New York City and BOYS that someone has always wanted to tell, and is actually very, very astutely observed and witty. I love Diane Vadino so much more now, which is to say, a lot a lot a lot, and mostly that extra dose of lovin' is due to one of the things she said to Ron GalleyCat:

"I don't want to be too serenity prayer about it, but there are things I can control, and things I can't," Vadino said as we sat down to lunch in Brooklyn Heights, shortly after she had returned to New York City from an extended stay in London. "I just don't care anymore. I hate to be reductive about it, but I can choose to be obsessive or I can choose to just let it go."

Yes. Exactly. I'm buying my necklace. And I hope Diane Vadino comes to Boston on her book tour, because I would like to give her a really big, dorky high-five and maybe ask her if she wants to go boot shopping.

 

11/5/2007 4:52:25 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Thanks to Brookline Booksmith for hosting the Nick Hornby reading

Just to make sure, we decided to wait until the Curse of the Hornbino had been demolished by Your 2007 Boston Red Sox before posting the rest of Nick Hornby's Q&A at the Devotion School in Brookline, where the patron saint of record-store geeks and football obsessives appeared last week to read from his so-called young-adult novel Slam, about a Tony Hawk-worshipping teenager named Sam who flees his hometown after knocking up his girlfriend. In the video above, Hornby discusses the Farrelly Bros adaptation of Fever Pitch, his relationship with Tony Hawk, the cultural significance of skateboarding, and why Slam indulges in a bit of teenage time traveling. Enjoy.

Previously
BOSTONPHOENIX: Brit Wits: As Nick Hornby and Irvine Welsh face 50, two of Brit Lit’s standard-bearers stare down middle age in very different ways.

10/29/2007 10:21:03 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Too bad Chris Crocker and his not-fake crying and serious glitter eyeshadow didn't bother You Tubing a video about leaving poor James Frey alone a year ago. Oh well - just watch this and replace "Britney" with "James." So yeah, we thought we were over it but we're not. This week the Observer weighs in on Frey-gate and we can't turn away.

Argh. It'll be a cold day in hell before we read another drug memoir.

9/19/2007 4:46:16 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

A piece in the New York Times' business section today about author Ayn Rand and her economic legacy got us thinking.

We read all of Rand's fiction back in high school, when we were feeling rebellious and anti-establishment and hating on adolescent suburban sheep (even though, duh, we were one of them). And while we don't live by her philosophy, we've long been fans of her writing. This has gotten us into trouble before. People who deem themselves literary taste-makers have yelled themselves blue in our faces trying to explain why Rand is a horrible writer who deals in primarily in clichés. Plus, she has no morals, and how can we stand that? We try to defend her.

Well, we say. The Fountainhead is a beautiful book, and when we try to explain why, we wind up talking a lot about Rand's aptitude for description and her ability to zoom into the hearts of her characters. Yes, she makes people villains and heroes, and most people in the real world aren't all Bad or all Good, but if you sit down to read one of her books, it's just something you have to expect of her style. You accept that, and you can accept the liberties she takes. Then - for us, at least - you can really take pleasure in what she has to say, whether you agree with it or not. If you ask us, she earns that right in the way she can weave a plot and a mystery. The Fountainhead is a true thriller, as are most of her novels.

Oh, and let's skip all the scary-creepy stuff about her affair with her (former) intellectual heir Nathaniel Brandon. We know. We read her biography, The Passion of Ayn Rand (written by Brandon's ex-wife Barbara), and if you care to learn the gossip, you can read it too.

What's more interesting to us, though (more interesting than gossip - we must be turning over a new leaf!) is that tons of high-powered CEOs and government figures have been harboring this secret passion for Objectivism in the years that Rand's novels have continued to sell and sell and sell. Rand's philosophy is a controversial one, which could explain why they're secretive about it - although it's common knowledge that recently-shamed Alan Greenspan counts her as one of his mentors.

But beyond that, is it possible that the movers-and-shakers of the business world could ever get together - not just at informal meetings - and do what Rand envisioned in Atlas Shrugged? Pull back, stop the motor of the earth, trample self-sacrifice, and rule by self-interest? We think perhaps, yes, although it's also just as possible that they would be doing it for reasons that Rand would despise.

Here's Part I of a conversation Rand had with Mike Wallace in 1959. We think she sounds a bit shrill at times, although we're fascinated by the fervor and belief you can practically see burning through her eyes. Not so unlike the religious fanatics she derides, if you ask us, but form your own opinion:

 

9/18/2007 1:08:16 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

From the New York Times Sunday Book Review, here's David Oshinsky's great essay about Knopf's biggest (and most regretable) rejections.

See for yourself.

9/11/2007 3:45:35 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

A few things we've been enjoying in lately:

The New York Times' Paper Cuts blog, maintained by the estimable Dwight Garner. He's on vacation now, but there are some wonderful recent entries here on what commuters read (or shouldn't read) on trains, as well as popular Christian sex manuals (which Garner doesn't think are much of a turn-on).

Maud Newton's excellent guest-blogged series on independent bookstores. Great stories and gossipy tidbits.

Hari Kunzru's short story "Magda Mandela," which appeared in the Aug 13 issue of the New Yorker. It's fantastic.

The latest batch of postcards on PostSecret. They've got a new book out, as well.

"The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue," an older Talk of the Town piece by Lillian Ross, might just be our favorite thing ever (in recent memory, of course).

Speaking of Ross, have you read Picture? We did, and we're kind of ridiculously obsessed with it, still.

Apparently, Nick Hornby wrote a YA novel titled Slam. It's sitting on our desk. We're not sure what to make of it yet.

For the long weekend, we've been saving the following, which we will read under the covers, AC on, in lieu of BBQs and shopping sales: Rishi Reddi's Karma and Other Stories, Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith (out this January by Canongate, we started it yesterday, snap judgement: odd but pretty?), and the new Vogue. Plans to buy Maus II as well -- a trip to the Harvard Book Store is in order.

What are you reading?

See you in September.

Love,
Word Up

8/31/2007 11:51:31 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The YouTube tags for this one are: Bukowski, poetry, beer, shit.

He uses the word "moxie" which is amazing in and of itself.

Watch. Rewind. Repeat.

8/14/2007 9:16:27 PM by Sharon | Comments [3] |  

Fourth of July came and went, but post-pyrotechnics, it’s worth remembering the people that lost their freedoms in the political fireworks. Ellee Dean reviews the first two books in the new, eight-volume Penguin Library of Native American History, and asks the question, what if casinos and reservations were our conciliatory prize?

 

Read the full review here.

7/13/2007 12:12:26 PM by Nina | Comments [0] |  

I'm number one!

Philip Roth wins his 3rd PEN/FAULKNER award for Everyman. Finalists included Edward P. Jones (All Aunt Hagar's Children), Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel), Deborah Eisenberg (Twilight of the Superheroes), and Charles D'Ambrosio (The Dead Fish Museum).

Obsessed with C.S. Lewis? Happen to be in NYC on March 2, the first Friday of the month? Hang with the pseudo-Narnians.

Has anyone read The Secret? Our Oprah-loving friends won't shut up about it. Also, did author/producer Rhonda Byrne steal the idea from a husband-wife team that channel the spirit of Abraham?

The New Yorker says, "Quotable quotes are coins rubbed smooth by circulation."

2/26/2007 12:59:42 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Girl on the Verge

We’ll admit to being a little jealous of VENDELA VIDA’s charmed writer’s life. She co-edits the Believer magazine, she co-founded the non-profit children’s writing center 826 Valencia, and she lives in San Francisco with her literary-hero husband, David Eggers. Even better, she isn’t afraid to address those huge, ambiguous questions nobody knows the answer to. Her second novel, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, follows a young girl’s search for answers when she realizes that nothing she believes is real. Vida blends truth and myth at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 6:30 pm | free | 800.542.READ.

Check out our Nina's interview with Vendela -- they talk reindeer blood, writer's block, and violence.

2/6/2007 11:39:59 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Marisha Pessl, literary hotshit of the moment (not according to the Dig) for her debut novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics, wrote an Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes that argues in favor of embracing the nefarious freshman 15. Pack it on, she says, because there’s plenty of time for rules and restraint after you graduate. College is all about excess and salads will make you sulky. It’s not a bad message. But she sure loves her literary devices, particularly alliteration. Here’s the piece, in an alliterative nutshell:

 

Pessl references cravings for “pizza, pasta, Twinkies and Tab” and suggests that the problem with “collegiate calorie counting” when studying “Kierkegaard or Conrad” after snacking on “seitan and soy chips” is “stomachs seasick, sometimes outright ill.” It’s not the time for dieting because college is “four fleeting years of free-spirited indulgence,” in which you might meet a French girl and “soon you’re specializing in Sartre.” It’s a time to be “a fool, fall flat, find out you . . . never really had a clue” and if you “gain a little gut studying Goethe,” don’t lose sleep, and eat cake while you can, because after you graduate, those study sessions with “beer, Byron, and buffalo wings” will feel like a sweet dream. In the words of Sharon, she's hot & high-rollin.

10/6/2006 12:54:32 PM by Nina | Comments [2] |  

A 10^th anniversary edition of David Foster Wallace’s juggernaut of a novel Infinite Jest is being released in November. (Amazon lists the date as November 13). And according to the Howling Fantods, the premiere site for all things DFW, Dave Eggers wrote the forward.

 

In other DFDubs news, John Krasinski, the 26 year-old Newton native who plays Jim on The Office, is making a movie based on Wallace’s short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (which includes the story “Forever Overhead,” which I read as a 13 year old in the Best American Fiction anthology of 1992; I fell hard for DFW after that). It’s unclear, though, whether the movie will incorporate all the stories, or the four in the collection titled “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” interview-format stories in which men reveal their licentious sexual proclivities.

10/5/2006 11:51:02 AM by Nina | Comments [0] |  

In April, 2005, a contest was announced. People ages 20 to 29 were invited to submit non-fiction essays on any subject to Matt (used to love C&C Music Factory!) and Jillian (went to three NKOTB shows!), two twentysomething editorial assistants at Random House. The blue-ribbon essay would earn the author a quick $20,000, and it, along the running-up essays would be included in an anthology published by Random House.

 

The resulting collection, Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers will be released later this month. The press release, which came to Word Up with an advanced copy of the book, references Skeletor, slap bracelets, and POGS, as well as the musical predilections of the two editors. This is what we consumed! This is who we are! But it goes without saying that we’re self-aware enough to know we amount to more than our iPod playlists and our choice in sneakers!!!

 

It didn’t bode well, and it didn’t get me particularly amped up to see what my contemporaries are up to. Irony, of course, isn’t dead. But for those of us born between ’77 and ’86, irony bred with cynicism and the offspring was snark. And from the Twentysomething release, I figured that’s what the collection would be. An anthology of blog posts, from ours, a generation of snark.

 

Fortunately, the essays aren’t all in-jokes and snide appraisals. In fact, for the most part, the work is earnest, honest, and well-written. Jennifer Glaser writes about her sex life with her dying boyfriend in “Sex and the Sickbed.” in “Live Nude Girl,” Kathleen Rooney (the one author representing Massachusetts in the anthology), tells about her career as a nude artists’ model. The piece begins: “I am twenty-five years old, five foot eight, 110 pounds, with huge dark eyes and long dark hair, and I look totally fucking amazing naked.” In “Rock My Network,” Theodora Stites falls back on the you-are-who’s-in-your-network idea, documenting her electronic social climbing through MySpace, Friendster, Second Life, and Dodgeball. “I honestly don’t know why anyone wants to socialize in person anymore,” she writes. “It’s so difficult to concentrate on talking to just one person at a time.” It feels shallow in comparison to the rest.

 

The first-place winner hasn’t been announced, but if we had to bet, we’d go with Kyle Minor’s outstanding, engrossing essay called “You Shall Go out with Joy and Be Led Forth with Peace” which deals with brutality, hopelessness, and the non-existence of miracles. It’s the opening chapter of a memoir he’s working on, and Minor also edits a lit journal called The Frost Proof Review, and placed second in the 2004 Atlantic Monthly student fiction contest. We’ll let you know if he takes first place in this contest when we find out. The collection is worth getting for his essay alone, but taken as a whole, it’s a propitious look at writers coming of age right now, and it's a pleasant surprise.

8/10/2006 6:05:10 PM by Nina | Comments [0] |  

The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) monitors both the number and type of books published per country per year. In 2005, the US shelved 172,000 new books. We only came in second to the UK, which printed a total of 206,000.

With numbers like that it's no surprise to anyone -- especially struggling writers -- that landing a book deal, or even just scoring an agent, has gotten harder than debuting a number one pop single without ever having released a record. It helps if you're as cute as Lily Allen. But most unpublished fiction writers we know (ourselves included) are perpetually exhaustinated, malnourished, and pasty. We avoid contact with fresh air and sunshine and other humans in favor of the warm glow MS Word v. 6.0 emits on our laptop. Just livin life, ya'll.

Since we're always staring at a computer screen, we were thrilled to learn via handy press release that the relationship of writers to publishers is being TRANSFORMED by a little thang called electronic mail. The release, courtesy Publishersandagents.net:

"At one time, a new book author had to go through an agent to sell a book to a major publisher. But now with e-mails and a compelling query, writers with a good story have been able to break through and achieve major deals...It's an approach that has been changing the relationship between writers and publishers, connecting them directly or helping writers find agents to close the deal with already interested publishers."

That was a convulted way of saying that P&A.net is one of many companies that sends out mass email pitch queries to agents and publishers for a subscription fee. They also offer special tools and tricks to beefing up your query letter and getting your manuscript read and reviewed, rather than tossed in to the slush pile or trashed as spam. Well, we used to work in publishing, and the other assistant in our office would sometimes forward us horrible pitch letters that we would giggle over during our five second lunch break. So it's true that a smart query can make a difference in getting treated like a professional -- even if your actual manuscript is terrible. There are horrible books being published every day. We know. We read them in airports and buy them at the supermarket for kitch value.

If you head over to P&A.net's extremely meta website that looks like something out of AOL's Hometown Member pages circa 1997 (who needs spell-checker when you've got 15 pt Tahoma fonts?), you can read testimonials from over 150 clients who claim to have either found a publisher or gained an agent from this service.

NANOWRIMO is four months away, and like we do every year, we torture ourselves into thinking we're actually going to give it a shot come November 1st. Realistically speaking we'll probably just wind up trying to send out a short story or two so that we can collect the rejection letters in a shoebox to show our grandchildren when we want to prove we were once exciting and creative in our youth. Bottom line, though, is we want to be published. We're also poor as hell and can't afford P&A's subscription-only magic. Plus, we like masochistic, large projects that consume vast quantities of our time. So we've decided to compile a list of free resources that'll have you on your merry way to proofing galleys at the local coffee shop. Those trustafarians scribbling in their painstakingly decorated journal-notebooks are so gonna wish they were you. Oh, and leave a comment if you think we're missing something important, because there's a shitton out there and we're still new at this, too. 

1. Poets & Writer's Magazine: Links to 429 literary magazines where you can send poems and short stories, as well as 156 small presses that are likelier to entertain unsolicited pitches from unknown or unpublished authors.
2. The Council of Literary Magazines and Small Presses (CLMP).
3. New Pages' handy Guide to Literary Magazines. Read as many as you can, and send your work to those that share the aesthetic of your voice, your subject, and your style. They're all looking for something different, which means you should tailor your submissions to the magazines that want exactly what you've already done.
4. Better yet, New Pages' Guide to Online Literary Magazines. Start here and work your way up to print -- online lit mags are well-respected and just as widely read (if not more so -- free content?!) as print mags. And many of them submit to Best Of collections -- which means, if an online mag prints your work, you're in the running.
5. Grub Street: More links to literary and press guides, as well as info on New England writer's residences, local mags calling for submissions, and upcoming contests. The fall class schedule at Grub St. should be up in a few weeks here.
6. Good god, we heart Ploughshares, Emerson College's esteemed literary journal. They're tough to crack, but if you're a local, you've got to send here. They might even get back to you with a personalized rejection letter (seriously, that's cool). Or, they could accept your work, which would give you enormous bragging rights forever and ever and ever.
7. And holy shit we're totally obsessed with Zoetrope: All-Story, too. Reach for your dreams!
8. Keeping up with Publisher's Weekly, the industry's trade magazine standard for news and pre-pub reviews, is a great way to find out more about current literary trends in case you're sitting on something you can tailor to the demands. It's not necessarily worth the subscription fee, but the Web Exclusives still allows you to access most reviews, as well as the PWJobZone. Working in the industry can only help you learn the ins and outs of how to get published.
9. So You Wanna: Publish a Book, Publish a Short Story, Publish a Poem: Obvious yet simple. Step-by-step instructions to doing each of these things.
10. Subscribe to Publisher's Lunch (run by Publisher's Marketplace), a daily e-mail newsletter that publishes deal news, trends, job opportunities, and industry coups: PublishersLunch-subscribe@topica.com
11. Atlantic Monthly's comprehensive list of Boston publishers and media is a good resource for local publishers to pitch to, not to mention internship opportunities if you're still in school.
12. Neil Gaiman runs a much beloved author blog, and he has some wise suggestions and a bevy of links on this post, which answered a reader's query last January.
13. MediaBistro: Excellent, heavily updated content on everything that has anything to do with publishing -- media, books, the works. And you don't need to be an AvantGuild member to learn.
14. Don't count on Craig's List: $850 for a short story? Is this f'reals?
15. Start a blog, get a book deal. We'll be waiting for that phone call.

 

 

8/1/2006 3:01:49 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

I just Googled Heidi Pitlor for info so that I could write up a blurb about her upcoming reading at the Harvard Book Store. Got completely distracted by the top link, to this four-year old Village Voice literary supplement piece: Young, Gifted, and Workshopped.

Right now I've got a few friends who hate their jobs and are just deluded and brilliant enough to want to go back to school for their MAs, but I don't know many who think about going for an MFA as though it's a make you or break you life choice. For the most part, grad school is either a way into academia or a guaranteed break into the higher earning bracket of your chosen field. When you get an MFA in fiction writing, though, you're spending a couple of years in proverbial isolation, workshopping your heartbreaking short stories with ten other doe-eyed, equally heartbroken people who write in equally heartbreaking ways that are actually, probably more heartbreaking than yours. So now you get to be insecure about your god-given talent. Especially if you go to the Iowa Writer's Workshop (more competitive than HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL!), a place that, for me, inspires a reaction akin to a death (what the hell do you do in Iowa City except hang out in the cornfield and sit in front of your computer, wishing you were as good as the other geniuses in your workshop) alternating with utter and complete joy (um, two years to concentrate on nothing but the craft and study in a place that has churned out more famous writers than I can bear to think about--my raving fantasies about luxurious book tours and offers to be the celeb writer guest judge/taster on Iron Chef have no outlet other than this). Even if it isn't Iowa, you're basically saying yeah, I'll put my life on hold for a couple of years and happily go into debt, and I won't even come out with a real Masters. It's a Master of Fine Arts--which means you can get out and teach, but that's it--all the while hoping that an agent sees your school on the letter you stuck in with your unpublished, unsolicited manuscript bound by nothing but your own terror and the sweat of your intelligently furrowed brow.

I'm intrigued by the article's discussion of the fact that so many short story collections, and even novels, are getting, as Pitlor describes, too "workshoppy." I easily fall for a really gut-busting epiphany or a neatly tied up ending that isn't quite disastrous, but isn't all sugar and happiness either--readers like to imagine they're reading something that could actually happen, I think. The piece does make a good point, though, about crisis points escalating in an all too familiar manner, contrived resolutions that are overly tidy, revelations that are satisfying but fit too well in the puzzle. Workshoppy, indeed. Except isn't that what thousands of new writers are going to school to learn how to do? Does this mean getting your MFA won't get you any closer to Oprah's couch on Book Club day? Frankly, that's a frightening thought on many levels.

Of the examples listed, I guess I can agree that the ever-present Steve Almond falls into that category--even knowing that, though, I still adore him. I'll read him anyway. So it doesn't matter that he's "workshoppy"--because he's marketable. But does that make him even worse? Are MFA grads just a manufacted products of their own manufactured environs? My head hurts. 

Oh yeah, and I'm kind of in shock and awe over the mention of Raul Correa, who used to be my creative writing instructor back at a summer writing program I was in when I was 16 (yep, I liked my summers to be as nerdy as possible). I remember him telling our class about his book, which was still in drafts at the time. I have to get I Don't Know, But I've Been Told now, immediately, yesterday. This is the same guy who used to tell our class over and over again that "bad writers borrow, good writers steal," (so true), and now he's got a novel long out with a narrator that Publishers Weekly describes as "a cross between Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield." And PW doesn't mess.

7/6/2006 2:09:33 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |