What I’ve Learned as a Writer
By Leo Babauta I’ve been a professional writer since I was 17: so nearly 24 years now. I’ve made my living with words, and have written a lot of them — more than 10 million (though many of them were duplicates). That means I’ve made a ton of errors. Being a writer means I’ve failed a lot, and learned a few things in the process. Now, some of you may be aspiring writers (or writers looking for inspiration from a colleague). So for anyone interested in writing, I’d love to share what I’ve learned so far. Write every damn day. And one thing I’ve learned, above all, is this: the life that my writing has changed more than any other is my own.
I Just Didn't Like Her: Notes on Likeability in Fiction - The Millions
1. In high school I had a zine with my friend Vanessa. It included our poetry and short stories, and for the cover of the first issue we used a label maker to spell out its title. After we’d put out one or two issues, I received a polite request from a man in prison, asking me to send him a copy. To borrow a phrase from Bennie Salazar, the record producer in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad, this is one of my “shame memories.” Lately, I’ve been thinking: If I were a fictional character, would readers hate me? In her essay “Perfectly Flawed” Lionel Shriver writes, “Surely if fiction recorded the doings only of good campers who anguish about climate change and buy fair trade coffee, novels would be insufferably dull.” Every couple of months there’s a new defense of unlikeable characters (see: Claire Messud‘s take) or likeable ones (see: Jennifer Weiner’s), and this conversation often returns to our cultural expectations of women. 3. 6. Susan’s reactions fascinated me. 7.
5 Tips For Getting Out of a Long-Term Reading Slump
D’you ever find yourself . . . just not reading? For weeks? Or months? Maybe years? I have gone through long-term reading slumps that have made me ashamed even to keep calling myself a reader. Never fear! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What tricks have you used to get out of a reading slump?
Cool Stuff Librarians Do: Librarians Without Borders
When I was little I wanted to be a doctor, and imagined myself sweeping across continents providing invaluable medical assistance as part of Doctors Without Borders. I came to accept that I’m a writer, not a medical professional, but now I have an opportunity to realign those early dreams with my actual life: I’m interning with the coolest group I know of – Librarians Without Borders. Same basic concept, slightly different product. Librarians Without Borders (LWB) originated as a student project dreamed up by Founder and Co-Executive Director (and my lovely internship advisor) Melanie Sellar, who was then attending library school at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Now coming up on its ten year anniversary, the nonprofit is on a mission to “improve access to information resources regardless of language, geography, or religion, by forming partnerships with community organizations in developing regions.” LWB’s tagline is: Putting information in the hands of the world.
Ask Yourself: Am I Awake Right Now, or Am I Dreaming? | Oh, the Books!
One of my favorite things about Sci-Fi November is getting the chance to discuss various specifics about things I like within science fiction. (Last year, I discussed cyborgs, clones, space, and multiverse theory.) These posts generally get pretty long, because, I mean, there’s a lot to say about these topics! I can write essays about these things, but still these posts feel like I’m barely scratching the surface. Even still, I hope you enjoy my discussion and join in! If you know me, you probably know how important sleep is to me. Some of us get too much of it (or get it at the wrong times), some of us can never get enough of it, but we all seem to need it — and scientists still don’t even know why. When Sleep Becomes Problematic Some stories treat sleep as a bit of a problem, or perhaps an unwilling contributor to a problem. Similarly, in the TV drama, Awake, Detective Michael Britten continually flips between two alternate realities. Sleeping for a Looooong Time Manipulating Dreams
Name Your Darlings: Writers on the Titling Process - The Millions
John Steinbeck found Of Mice and Men in a poem by Robert Burns; Joan Didion came across Slouching Towards Bethlehem in one by William Butler Yeats. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was scrawled in the bathroom stall of a Greenwich Village saloon, which Edward Albee entered in 1954. Many of Raymond Carver’s titles were changed by his longtime editor, Gordon Lish — for better (“Beginners” became “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”) or worse (“Are These Actual Miles?” was replaced by the vague and perplexing “What Is It?”). F. In lieu of a fateful bathroom visit or an assertive editor, how do authors find their titles? Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas: I knew my debut novel’s title would finish with the clause The Cat’s Pajamas, however I heard the beginning of the phrase only as a rhythm. Ted Thompson, author of The Land of Steady Habits: When it was finally time to submit my novel to publishers, I had no title.
The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World
[Editor’s note: In celebration of the holidays, we’re counting down the top 12 Flavorwire features of 2012. This post, at #1, was originally published January 31.] With Amazon slowly taking over the publishing world and bookstores closing left and right, things can sometimes seem a little grim for the brick and mortar booksellers of the world. A gorgeous converted Dominican church gives the power of reading its due diligence.
Goodreads Doesn’t Care If You Read the Book You Reviewed
In the Goodreads entry for Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love For New York, the recent anthology edited by Sari Botton — and a sequel to last fall’s zeitgeist-claiming Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York — there are 60 ratings. These shake out like your average online book ratings, with the spread ending up like this: 16 people gave it five stars, 9 gave it four, 7 gave it three, 2 gave it two, and 26 people gave it one star. Cue the record scratch. One star? Even for something that’s barely a book — for example, A Shore Thing by Snooki — the one-star ratings amounted to only nine percent of the reviews. Now, I’m on record as enjoying Hale’s writing, on average, and she has one of the strongest essays in the anthology. As a result, sympathizers have hit back at Hale where they can, and this includes Goodreads. This case is specifically interesting since it’s easy to trace back to the exact moment that this book got one-star ratings.
