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Poet Mark Doty (on receiving the $50,000 Whiting Award) speaks movingly about why writers write--what writers want out of writing--and about how insecure they generally feel about their writing (Critical Mass, NBCC blog)
Space of the Week: A Life in the Stacks (Wendy Goodman, New York 6-22-11). Can you identify? I can!
“Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig”
~ Stephen Greenblatt
"The story — from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace — is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories."
~ Ursula K. LeGuin
"When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters. This isn't to say I wished to change places. I didn't envy their persecution and the way in which it heightens their social importance. I didn't even envy them their seemingly more valuable and serious themes. The trivialization, in the West, of much that's deadly serious in the East is itself a subject, one requiring considerable imaginative ingenuity to transform into compelling fiction."
~ Philip Roth, Paris Review interview, 1986
"It's easier to murder someone else's darlings than your own."
~ Stephen King, On Writing
“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new ideas he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.”
~William Stafford, poet
"I'm compelled by language, so there are days for instance where if it sounds flat and dry I try to find something else to do that will help the book. That often means going to poets and reading poetry. That's my fuel tank. Voice and language is primary, and everything comes out of that."
~ Alice Sebold
"Well begun is half done."
~Aristotle
"If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic."
~ novelist Toni Morrison |
E-mail Pat (pat at patmcnees dot com)
Dying: A Book of ComfortThis site built to support the book expanded into Illness and Recovery
Writers on Writing(complete archive of the NY Times series, writers exploring literary themes. Requires free membership.)
Letters of Note (fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos--that you were never expected to see)
Aha Moments (from the brilliant Mutual of Omaha campaign to record people's stories about moments of clarity, defining moments when they gained the wisdom to change their life)
TED: Ideas worth sharing Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world
Freelance National Anthem (Bill Dyszel, 4 minutes)
KeepMeOut (addicted to a website? bookmark this page and it will remind you to get back to work!)
Today's Front Pages (check out Newseum's U.S. map -- move your cursor across the map and see the front pages change)
Online Education Database150 resources to help you write better, faster, or more persuasively
Help a reporter out (HARO)(useful for reporters and for sources)
Paris Review "Writers at Work" Interviews (selections from 1953 on, a gift to the world, and with a single click you can view a manuscript page with the writer's edits)
The Onion (if the news is making you sick, try this approach)
Truth-o-meter (St. Petersburg Times, www.politifact.com)(St. Pete Times on whether, and how much, various notable people are telling the truth)
Fact Check (Annenberg sorts political truths from half-truths)
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Abraham Verghese, author of ‘Cutting for Stone,’ describes his writing life (Washington Post 12-9-11). Loved his novel Cutting for Stone
ADHD, Journalism, and the Nightmare of Finding Manna in the Desert (William Gray, Talking Writing, 4-11-11)
Alone, With Words. Why writers can’t live to please their readers. (Jed Perl, The New Republic,6-9-10)
An Easy Way to Increase Creativity. Why thinking about distant things can make us more creative. (Oren Shapira and Nira Liberman, Scientific American 7-21-09)
The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered. Clive James' classic poem about about literary schadenfreude, as posted by Dwight Garner on the NY Times Paper Cuts blog about books.
Boxers, Briefs and Books. John Grisham's op-ed piece on what hard work writing is, one theme of the forthcoming collection Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit, ed. by Sonny Brewer (with stories by Grisham, Pat Conroy, Rick Bragg, and many other authors).
Diaries and letters. Yours Ever: People and Their Letters , edited by Thomas Mallon (which Carolyn See calls a "crazy quilt" collection with no discernible organizing principle, but "one of those perfect Christmas gifts to give to bachelor uncles or friends who aimlessly hang around.") By the man who published A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries. Writers well-represented in both volumes. The Elaine's That I Knew by Brian McDonald (Opinion, NY Times, 5-26-11, Elaine's last day in business), author of Last Call at Elaine's: A Journey from One Side of the Bar to the Other. (Not the only book about Elaine Kaufman's famed night spot. See also Everyone Comes to Elaine's: Forty Years of Movie Stars, All-Stars, Literary Lions, Financial Scions, Top Cops, Politicians, and Power Brokers at the Legendary Hot Spot by A.E. Hotchner.
Plot Twist: Philip Carlo, true crime writer with Lou Gehrig's disease, is working on his memoir. His deadline: his own death.
The Power of Maybe: Processing Criticism (Kevin Fenton, guest blogging on The Loft's Writer's Block)
Talking Writing, an online monthly literary magazine that supports writers and those interested in literature by encouraging creative discussion of the writing process. Follow on Twitter
Writers on Writing, a weekly radio program hosted by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett (author of Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within) and Marrie Stone, interviewing writers, poets and literary agents. You can download and listen to podcasts.
"Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say."
~Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story
"I believe in not quite knowing. A writer needs to be doubtful, questioning. I write out of curiosity and bewilderment...I've learned a lot I could not have learned if I were not a writer."
~ William Trevor
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Connect with other writers (and editors)
Links to online writers groups, critique groups, and communities
Absolute Write (MacAllister Stone's Water Cooler, where writers exchange tips, share experiences)
AuthorNation.com (online community for authors, writers, poets, and their readers)
Backspace, The Writer's Place (writers helping writers navigate the often confusing world of Big Publishing)
Beyond the Margins (online sounding board for writers who met, taught, workshopped or otherwise communicated through Grub Street, a nonprofit creative writing center in Boston)
Black Writers Reunion & Conference
Conferences, workshops, and other learning places
Crime fiction organizations and conventions (Overbooked)
CrimeOnline.net (forum, community of crime fiction writers, readers, and professionals from publishing and crime-related fields)
Crime Writers (a forum for those interested in writing or currently writing crime fiction--police procedurals, noir, hard-boiled, etc.)
CrimeThruTime (Yahoo discussion group on historical mysteries, authors and readers)
Critique and discussion groups
Editors and copyeditors
Fiction writers
Fiction Factor forum
Field Report (this is a writing contest, for "true life" stories, which some of my life-story writing students find addictive)
Illustrators and media professionals
JacketFlap (social networking community for published authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults)
Journalists' organizations
Kitchen Tables and Regional Get-Togethers (International Women's Writing Guild)
Local and regional U.S. groups for writers and editors
Meetup groups for writers(check out those near your zip code) and the Meetup HQ Blog (to learn about other meetup groups with your special interests)
Murder Must Advertise (online discussions on best ways to promote mysteries)
Mystery Readers International, reading Groups
Nothing Binding (social networking for writers, authors, and readers)
Online writing communities--blogs, forums, conferences, and other groups (about.com)
Open Salon (a social content site for writers, photographers, and artists, where everyone blogs or comments on what others blog)
Overbooked (crime fiction organizations and conventions)
Poets
Red Room (a social media site that connects readers with authors)
Science and medical writers
Screenwriters
Scribophile (a social writing workshop and writer's community, with online critique groups)
Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), regional groups and gatherings
Sisters in Crime (Internet chapter) (sniff: disbanding in December 2010)
Specialty writing(network with fellow automotive writers, cat writers, dog writers, horse writers, food writers, outdoor writers, songwriters, sportswriters, travel writers, Web writers, wine writers)
StackExchange.com (a Q&A site for authors, editors, reviewers, professional writers, and aspiring writers -- with a http://writers.stackexchange.com/faq
The Stiletto Gang. Women writers on a mission to bring mystery, humor, and high heels to the world)
Technical writers
Therapists Wired to Write (Sarah Kershaw, NY Times, 6-3-09, on a group of therapists who form a creative writing group to help each other write about themselves, their work, and their patients -- and the last is the tricky part)
Today's Writing Community (appears to emphasize poems and stories, with discussion groups and an archive of many articles and author interviews)
Washington Biography Group (WBG), meets once a month, Monday evenings, in Washington DC
What Women Write. See, for example, this blog and conversation about writing retreats and critique groups: Writing Retreats Aren't Just for Writing
Women's National Book Association (WNBA) (national organization, with chapters in major cities, of people who work with and value books, including writers, editors, librarians, teachers, and publishing professionals)
Writer-L (a subscription-only listserv for writers of narrative nonfiction)
The Writer's Block (Scriptorium's message board)
The Writer's Chat Room
The Writers WorkSpace (a membership-based work and meeting space for writers of all genres in Chicago)
Writers and Editors One on One(magazine writers up close and personal with magazine editors)
Writer Unboxed (blog about the craft and business of genre fiction)
Writing Communities(Writer's Digest's best websites for 2008)
WritingWorld.com has, among other things, an impressive set of Links to Online Resources for Writers, including Links to Critique Groups and Discussion Groups
Review of online writers groups, critique groups, and communities. Squidoo comments on such sites as Scribophile (an online critique group), WritersCafe.org (a community for sharing), The Write Idea (Helen Whittaker's forum), Authonomy (see Squidoo member Rikleigh's guide to using Authonomy), and Inkpop (for teen writers).
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“People ask me, ‘Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, about love, the way others do?’. . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it. . . There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.”
~ M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical MeSome books to get you going:
• Maria Arana, ed., The Writing Life: Writers on How They Think and Work (a collection from Washington Post Book World)
• Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
• Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (1990)
• Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (1986)
• Jack Hart, A Writer's Coach: An Editor's Guide to Words That Work
• Stephen King, On Writing (2002)
• Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1995)
•· The New York Times, and Darnton, John (introduction). Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times, New York Times (2002)
• Tan, Amy. The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
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The lives of writers and editors
(in books and articles)
I will add to this at a leisurely pace, as I finish up a couple of big projects.
Diana Athill, a legendary editor in British literary publishing, has been the subject of a couple of interesting articles: In Life’s Latest Chapter, Feeling Free Again (Sarah Lyall on Diana Athill, at 91, feeling liberated in an "old person's home," NY Times 10-10-10) and The unrivalled Diana Athill (Ian Jack, The Guardian, 10-31-09. "A bestseller at 91, she forged the modern memoir.")
• Diana Athill's memoirs themselves: Instead of a Letter: A Memoir (her life from birth to 42, featuring a major romantic disappointment which led her to devote herself to her career); After a Funeral (frankly writing about an unusual domestic arrangement, among other things); Somewhere Towards the End (about that period late in life when there is a "falling away" and one is preoccupied with thoughts of death--one of the stronger of her memoirs), and Stet: An Editor's Life (about her fifty years working with legendary publisher Andre Deutsch and with such authors as Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, Brian Moore, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Mordecai Richler, Philip Roth, and John Updike). If you think you are underpaid, this may (or may not) make you feel better.
MORE TO COME![Go Top]
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A GREAT READ
and communities of book lovers
Best reads and most "discussable"
Fact-finding, fact-checking, and news and info resources BOOK AND MAGAZINE PUBLISHING
New, used, and rare books, Amazon.com and elsewhere
Blogs, social media, podcasts, ezines, survey tools and online games
Entrepreneurship for creatives
And finding freelance gigs
Blogs, video promotion, intelligent radio programs
Indie publishing, digital publishing, POD, how-to sources
Includes original text by Sarah Wernick WRITERS AND CREATORS
Plus contests, other sources of funds for creators
Copywriting, speechwriting, marketing, training, and the like
Literary and commercial (including genre)
Writing, reporting, multimedia, equipment, software
Translators, indexers, designers, photographers, artists, illustrators, animators, cartoonists, image professionals, composers
Groups for writers who specialize in animals, children's books, food, gardens, family history, resumes, sports, travel, Webwriting, and wine (etc.) ETHICS, RIGHTS, AND OTHER ISSUES
Google Books Settlement (Pro and Con)
Plus media watchdogs, FOIA EDITORS AND EDITING
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