Writer's' Magazine

Just having fun at Magazine Cover (requires a Flickr account to use)

American Literature

This is not the best time of year for productivity where I live. Between the fire scares and the blackouts, I've been reading William Zinsser's third edition (1985) of his classic On Writing Well. In that version, he added a chapter, "Nonfiction as the New American Literature". It blows away (and did it 20 years ago) Donadio's article I mentioned earlier this month. Citing the experience of the Book-of-the-Month Club, he attributes the change in our reading preference to World War II and television, both of which heightened Americans' awareness to a reality outside literature. " ... I have no patience with the snobbery that accompanies "literature"--the snobbery that says that nonfiction is only journalism by another name, and that journalism by any name is a dirty word." He also cites nonfiction as being the more comfortable path for beginners because "It enables them to write about what they know or can observe or can find out. This is especially true of young people--they will write far more willingly about experiences that touch their own lives because that's what interests them. Motivation is at the heart of writing." [nonfiction]

Idioms, Jargon

For a quick pit stop [look that one up!] to check the meaning of a phrase you might be tempted to use, try the Idiomsite.com - Idioms and Sayings and Jargon Scout, although the former offers no reference material and the latter seems to be frozen in time, about 2001. They will indicate if you're on the right track [another one!] to explore before you hit the heavier reference websites like the dictionaries and encyclopedias.

[idioms and jargon]

Jane Austen

If I were into toys, I'd get myself a
Jane Austen Action Figure

Jane Austen was one of the greatest English novelists in history. Despite a rather sheltered life, she was able to capture the subtleties of human interaction so perfectly that her novels continue to be immensely popular to this day. This 5-1/4" tall, hard vinyl action figure comes with a book (Pride & Prejudice) and a writing desk with removable quill pen!

[writers toys]

Biased Reviews

Fair Is Square - The case for hiring biased book reviewers by Slate's Jack Shafer suggests:

Sometimes the enemy of the book author is the only person willing to write the truth. American editors shouldn't necessarily unassign a review if they learn that a reviewer had an affair with the book author in question's spouse. Instead, the editor should 1) encourage reviewers to disclose conflicts in the review and 2) run a standing disclaimer in the front of the book review explaining that the review lowered its ethical standards in order to raise its literary ones.

Sounds kind of like the fox guarding the hen house to me.[book reviews]

Amazon Shorts

I've mentioned previously that some big time writers feel that making their writing, or parts of it, available on the Internet can be profitable to their careers in general. Now Amazon.com is providing easier and wider accessibility with their "Amazon Shorts". What's Inside Amazon's Shorts? is a good description. Aside from the title, the 49-cent charge caught my attention. I wonder how much of that [really, how little] the author actually receives. Amazon's page about the program does not reveal this detail. Another disadvantage highlighted by the Book Standard article:

Everything sold through the Shorts program remains exclusive to Amazon for a period of six months, after which point the author is free to publish the work elsewhere. None of the stories are protected by Digital Rights Management Blockers (DRM), which means that once customers purchase the story, they are free to do with it what they will.

Even though the authors can publish elsewhere after six months, they will have forever relinquished the most lucrative first rights to Amazon, and tied up the work for half a year. I can only look on this as akin to teaching a low-cost class in order to sell high margin products to a captive audience. It's yet another tool for the writer's marketing kit. [writers' marketing]

Malapropisms Galore

It's truly impressive the way brave new bloggers link here, profess themselves to be professional writers with information to offer the world, and then proceed to bash the hell out of the language. Hence the warning in the box at the top of the page. Lately I've seen too many of these faux pas like confusing illusive with elusive, penchant with pension, and tote for tout. I just haven't the courage (or cruelty) always to leave comments or identify the assailants, no the time to email and deal with defensiveness. For prolonged amusement with citations, see Language Log: The birth of an eggcorn. [malapropisms]

Jean Rhys

The Writer's Almanac said today:

It's the birthday of a woman who made one of the great literary comebacks of the 20th Century, the English novelist Jean Rhys, ... born in Dominica, in the West Indies (1894). She published several novels, including one entitled Good Morning, Midnight. It came out in 1939.

She stopped writing during World War II and vanished from public life. Many of her readers assumed that she had died. And then in 1958, the BBC decided to make a movie of that novel. They put out an ad, asking for information about Jean Rhys, and she responded and was inspired to start writing again. And in 1966, 27 years after her previous novel, she published Wide Sargasso Sea.

I'd recently read that novel, small and interesting because the point of view shifts. I'm still pondering the mental state of the main character. Was she deranged or did she fit herself to others' definitions, a common condition of women everywhere and everywhen. [fiction]

Writers Pay

Twice in a week I've heard about desperate [please note the correct spelling!] new writers paying to get published. First it was from a colleague at a professional group who'd met a new member and discovered the person had paid $800 to "some deal found on the Internet". My companion just shook her head and signed, "When will they learn?" The second example is worse: paying more than $300 for a "critique" by an "agency" before they will agree to represent the author. "No, no, no!" we all shouted. "It's a scam!" The new author insisted this was something new [NOT!] and part of a paradigm shift in the publishing industry. Don't be so desperate that you're blinded to the facts of physics: just as water runs downhill, money flows TOWARD the writer. "Think about it this way, if it helps," I suggested. "You already did the work, right? Now you deserve to be paid." [writers]

English Rules

Poor Karl Swedberg rules the roost at English Rules. Wouldn't you know the post I saw that caught my eye was something silly? See A Few Good Links | English Rules

Ray Bradbury

Ode to Ray Bradbury:

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday best writer,
Happy birthday to you!

NameBase Research

Another research tool for writers is NameBase. A tutorial beginning on When is NameBase useful? suggests that this tool might help if you can answer "yes" to these questions about your research:

* Does your research project involve names of individuals, institutions, groups, or corporations?
* Did these names exist within the last 80 years?
* Are these names likely to have been mentioned in books, magazines, or newspapers?
* Are these names associated with the worlds of government, institutions, finance or organized crime by virtue of power, position, wealth, or notoriety -- rather than being the names of celebrities from sports or entertainment, or notables from science, literature, or the arts?

[research resource]

Google Copyrights

In Google's own blog, Print Product Manager Adam Smith announced the indexing giant is backing off scanning books in copyright. (This has been a big brouhaha.) Of course they had to put a positive spin on the move and present it as a benefit:

So now, any and all copyright holders, both Google Print partners and non-partners, can tell us which books the'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won't scan any in-copyright books from now until this November.

Read Rachael Deahl's article on the topic in The Book Standard. [Google copyrights]

Bad Example

Inside Pulse v2 is a new blog by "Carla Lee" who purports to be a small press professional, about "small presses, independent presses, and university presses" in relation to writers seeking to be published. Unfortunately the blog is buried on an annoyingly-designed website using white and red text on a black background (very hard on the eyes!) I'd put that practice in the "DON'T DO THIS!" category of website creation. This website design tip is just one of many you'll find in the second edition of my eBook, More Effective Websites for Writers, coming soon. [writers' websites]

Women Want

Oh, you must read Citizen Media Critic: If You're Thinking of Starting a Women's Mag... Elizabeth Spiers, editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com takes on, well, just about anyone who thinks only men are interested in reading about business and politics in magazines.

I'm going to suggest instead--selfishly, no less--that if you're planning to start one of the hundreds of new publications that will inevitably launch in the near future, and that publication happens to be a women's magazine, that you think about the portion of the audience that's less obsessed with fashion and gynecological issues.

She suggests that women want:
1. hard reportage
2. without gender-oriented self-conscious problem solving
3. take more risks
4. be funny (not sarcastic)

[women reading]

Bookmark Now

A USA Today online book review says 'Bookmark' keeps literary pretension in its place :

The essays in Bookmark Now offer more questions than answers about what we read and why and how, but they should trigger conversations.

Smokler asks, "If online reading was eating away at book reading, how did we explain literary web-logs that commanded thousands of readers a day?" ... Bookmark Now includes nine pages of online resources for lovers of the oldest of the old media.

Bookmark Now author Kevin Smokler and lit blogger Mark Sarvas of the Elegant Variation joined Steve Wasserman on Open Source radio's book program, talking about the role the internet is playing in transforming the literary landscape. Hear the MP3 recording. Interesting blog entries, too. [reading writing]

Free Preview

The online version of The Writer Magazine had a makeover. If you're not a subscriber to the print version, visit and register here between Aug. 16-26 with the access code "STORY" to get a free preview of the benefits magazine subscribers receive on the website. You'll even have access to the handy markets database.
Later addition: if the main registration doesn't work, try entering the secret code into the box on this page.
[writers' resources]

Comma Sense

Last night I had the privilege of attending the world premier book signing for Richard Lederer's latest offering, Comma Sense. It's the American response to Lynn Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves with punctuation rules, Lederer said. Oh, and humor, he said. Impertinence being my strong suit, I asked which style book or manual he followed. Lederer rather reluctantly admitted to having used the Chicago Manual of Style, but said he occasionally varied from its dicta. A style book is not a fun book to read. Comma Sense should be. I hope no errant apostrophe appears in this post. [punctuation]

Amazon Fix

Here's another gem plucked from Dan Poynter's newsletter:

Many publishers express their frustration with the inability to contact a human being at Amazon.com for content corrections or changes. You can easily submit changes to your titles listed on Amazon.com through the "Suggestion Box" at the bottom of the page for every book. Through the online catalog update form link on the same page, you can submit changes to title, author, languages, binding, number of pages, pub date, and format/edition. Expect these changes to take 5-7 business days, and if you don't see the change by then, submit it again.

I was reminded of this advice when I tried to search on an author's name within the Amazon site. The listing for at least one of the books had the writer's name garbled, causing the search engine to malfunction. It's the old GIGO principle! [Amazon]

Book Promotion

Many services already exist to help authors promote both traditional and self-published books. Here's a list that's been accumulating in my "drafts" pile of posts:
Library of Congress' Center for the Book
John Kremer's Open Horizons blog
Erika Dreifus on Promotion
Erika Dreifus on Creating Hype
Independent Authors
Book Signers

[promote books]

Feed Read

After posting about the The Writer's Almanac last month, I subscribed to email delivery of the daily column, somewhat in self-flagellation, to force more poetry into my life. What I've gained in addition, is a growing improvement in my grasp of and perspectives on history. For example, today's snippet commemorates the anniversary of the start of Hitler's bombing of London during WWII. Not only is the ghastly scope of that terrorism described, but it's also put into a context (the Nazis had already overrun France) and offers insight into a personality quirk that may have lost the war for Hitler. Of course, if I were writing something set in that time period and attempting authenticity, I would consult several history books, memoirs, and biographies; the Almanac's bite-size lesson helps rearrange and dust the furniture in my mental attic.

I had a similar, but not identical, experience reading Memoirs of a Geisha, a novel by Arthur Golden, set mostly in WWII Japan. Steeped in stories of American life during that period, I'd never given a thought to what it was like for ordinary Japanese (worse). I read to feed my voracious mind. [reading]

Blog Bestsellers

My apologies if recent posts that direct readers to N.Y. Times articles lead to dead ends for you. Apparently they've reverted to demanding payment instead of just the annoying registration scheme. Fortunately material from Book Standard is still available. That's where I read the intriguing Blogs and Bestsellers: One and the Same?.

If anyone is sure to have a real blog-to-print success story, it may be Julie Powell with Julie & Julia. After blogging daily about her year-long attempt to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Powell attracted media attention and, ultimately, landed her book deal with Little, Brown.

Of course, you realize a blog is a website. [writers' websites blog to book]

Fiction Replacement

In a N.Y. Times essay Rachel Donadio questions if Truth Is Stronger Than Fiction, a nice little play on the cliche that says truth is stranger than fiction, citing the near-death experience of fiction in the Atlantic Monthly and other magazines, and the dominance of nonfiction in book publishing.

Fiction may still be one escape of choice -- along with television and movies and video games and iPods -- but when it comes to illuminating today's world most vividly, nonfiction is winning. Not for nothing has ''The 9/11 Commission Report,'' a government document that reads like a thriller, sold more than a million copies. [writing fiction nonfiction]

Don't Do This

I'm positive I wouldn't want PR News Now! pimping for me if Turn Your Blog Into A Book And SelfPublish It With New Service is an example of their work. When I checked the promoted website, I reached a holding page from the domain seller. Way to go with a writer's website! I'm not sure I'd want to trust my blog to someone who doesn't know a "diary" from a "dairy" either:

People who keep blogs, or dairies can use my book to write, and publish their own book on a shoestring," says Peterson. Who has written four other books.

"Who has written four other books" is a sentence?
[writers' websites]

Born Writers

A wannabe asked on a forum, "r gud writers born or cn u learn it?" I gritted my teeth, shortened my "every piece of writing is an opportunity to forge good writing habits" speech, and thought about the question. Nature or nurture? The short answer is "both", especially for nonfiction, qualified for fiction. If you are born with high verbal skills (as measured by I.Q. and proficiency tests), highly sensitive and aware of your surroundings, and with a good memory, I suspect you could become a good nonfiction writer with ease. You might even be a natural story teller with imagination to produce decent fiction. It helps if you're born into a milieu that values reading, story telling, and the world outside your clan. Lacking these natal accidents, I think you can learn to develop the verbal aspects of your intelligence, deliberately sensitize yourself to notice changes, details, and to capture and recall them from memory. No matter how many notes I take in writing and/or tape record, there's always more in my mind about a conversation, person, place than I can capture at the moment. [writing]

MSN Blogs

An old friend and I reconnected after several years' separation. She asked what kind of writing I'm doing now. With a half-smile I revealed, "I'm a blog 'ho' these days," wondering if she'd recognize the term. Her eyebrows arched as her eyes enlarged. She stuttered. "Yeah, I write in other people's blogs for pay," I confessed. The brows lowered as she murmured softly. She probably thought at first I was pimping products in my own blog like one infamous ad system. Last week MSN launched its new content channels (anonymous blogs) called MSN Filter. Other bloggers, like Pro Hip Hop cried foul:

Launching an official blog without identifying the writers basically reduces it to a content management system and feeds into Microsoft's 'you will be assimilated into the cyborgsphere' public image.

You gotta hand it to the public for making things happen. By the end of the week and popular request, the blog managers began identifying themselves. Perhaps they were tired of being unknown in their seemingly unrewarding positions. When MSN advertised for writers earlier this year, it estimated the work (more than just blogging) would take 15 hours a week, but didn't mention payments. PaidContent quipped: "It has been hiring for these blog writing positions for some time now. The MSN blogs don't have any writer names, which is a bit strange, considering what blogs are." When you're a seasoned writer bylines become far less important than seeing your name on the paycheck. What difference does it make who wrote a piece, anyway? (No, I'm not an MSN "ho".) [blog writing]

Content Publishing

Owen Linderholm at Press for Change is taking the Blog to Book phenom to the next logical level cryptically called "blog author content publishing" in an interview at Small Press Blog. All that means is taking material from the blogs of several different authors and putting it together in a paper publication. If it is also offered as an ebook, it will become content aggregation and remix! The publisher already offers a .PDF peek inside the book, but strangely not at Amazon where the book is listed. [blog to book]

Free Books

Newsday reports Readers on fire, and it sounds like a great deal for avid bibliophiles. They explain PaperBack.com:

The 10-month-old book-swapping site works like an online library. After registering, users put at least nine of their own books into the site's database, which carries 39,000 titles. When a user requests a book, the site e-mails a printable page (that also serves as a makeshift book wrapper) to the user who posted that title...Currently, the site is free to join. The only cost to participate is the price of postage to mail a book, which is usually less than $1.50, paid by the sender. [books]

Website Needs

In this week's newsletter from Worldwide Freelance Writer, Aneeta Sundararaj advises:

Your website should have, at the very least, the following pages:
Home page
About Us
Testimonials
Frequently Asked Questions
Anti Spam Policy and Acceptable Use Policy
Privacy Policy
A description of the book(s) you are trying to market on the website
... a secure method of selling the product to your customers.

[writers' websites]

Bear Book

I got a kick out of John Bear's interview with SmallPress Blog about the advantages and disadvantages of selling your self-published book to a traditional publisher. One of the publications he mentions as providing best results from his book ads was the Mensa Bulletin, and I remember seeing them for years. When the same ad runs in a publication repeatedly, you know it's bringing in customers. [selling books]

Seven Plots

According to Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, only seven plotlines exist in our universe (albeit in infinite variation):

• tragedy
• voyage and return
• comedy
• overcoming monsters
• rebirth
• rags to riches
• the quest

Moreover, Booker suggests that five of the seven can all be considered comedy because they all have happy endings. That leaves tragedy standing alone, like The Cheese in the childhood ditty The Farmer in the Dell. Poor cheese, in the center of the circle with all the others pointing, laughing, waving about their pleasent endings. Hmm. Where was I? Oh, yes: this makes perfect sense from the consummate reductionistic psychologist's viewpoint, because all life is motivated toward pleasure (which can be as simple as the avoidance of tragic pain). Only stimulous and response exist. Pain generates an avoidance. Pleasure attracts. So, it must be quite simple to write a story or a novel. The devil of it is in the details, those infinite variations necessary to make stories unique.[fiction]

Fiction Lengths

The following is an excerpt from the July 22, 2005, Market Update newsletter from WRITERSMARKET.COM. You can subscribe to the email-delivered publication if you send a blank email to join-writersmarket@fwpubs.sparklist.com, or sign up online.

WHAT FICTION ARE YOU WRITING?

Since it helps to know what you're offering before you actually approach markets here's a quick list of lengths for the various types of fiction. If you aren't sure what kind of fiction you've been writing, here are the word count guidelines to help you figure it out.

Up to 1,000 words -- short-short, flash fiction or vignette
1,000-6,000 words -- short story
6,000-15,000 words -- long story or novelette
15,000-45,000 words -- novella
45,000-120,000 words -- novel (though most commonly 50,000-80,000 words)
Anything more than 120,000 will probably need to be broken up into a series of books or condensed.

Novels tend to be published by book publishers originally, though excerpts can be sold to magazines. Short-shorts, flash fiction, vignettes, and short stories are usually sold first in magazines —with the possibility of releasing a collection in book form after several have been published.

Long stories, novelettes, and novellas can be tougher to place, but the norm is for them to originally appear in magazines or collections of short fiction. [Tectag: fiction]