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"And then there’s this: if my house were burning down, the one thing I’d rush in to save would be my copy of The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, which I had signed at the first author reading I ever attended, the year that I was 16 and the author was 70. I could discourse endlessly on why my books are in no way improved by my signature, and my words are just the same on the page whether or not I’ve read them aloud. And while I know better than anyone that I am no Eudora Welty, I know how profoundly I was shaken to see her, how I felt that my book had been transformed by the touch of her hands."
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"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonora, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
"The wonderful thing about being a writer—and there aren’t that many wonderful things, as you know—is that if you have a job and you lose that job, you can still write."
Make yourself read this lengthy article at The Atlantic web site, if you're not a subscriber or don't want to go to the library and read it:
The woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love raised the bar for all writers. But you need not feel that faint twinge of jealousy. Turns it took Elizabeth Gilbert a looooong time to be accepted:
Lessing: Nobel win a 'disaster'
The increased media interest in her has meant that writing a full novel was next to impossible, she told Radio 4's Front Row.
Lessing, 88, also said she would probably now be giving up writing novels altogether.
Her latest book is the partly fictional memoir entitled Alfred and Emily.
Since her Nobel win she has been constantly in demand, she said.
"All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed."
Speaking about her writing, she said: "It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more.
This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever.
Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down a plughole."
Lessing is the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in its 106-year history.
Her best known work, of course, is The Golden Notebook.
Image (c) Helen Gallagher, please do not distribute without permission.
After speaking at the Univ. Wisconsin Milwaukee Spring Writer's Festival in March, I was lucky to be invited to appear on live television on The Morning Blend, up in Milwaukee. Here's my "HGTV" moment.from BeneathTheCover.com Over at Release Your Writing with Helen Gallagher, there’s an outstanding Another “Wow!” from this publisher. I recommend a visit to Helen’s blog to I was particularly fascinated by her Book Tour link. We do Virtual Book Tours "Gallagher examines the changing publishing industry and advocates ****************************************** SPAWN: Small Publishers, Artists, and Writers Network review by Patricia Fry... yes, it's "the" Patricia Fry:
Excerpt: " This book includes a section on the writing process and offers a resources appear throughout the book and also in a separate section toward the back of the book. And she includes a couple of chapters on book marketing. I especially found her information on website strategies interesting and useful." ****************************************** My yellow highlighter was flying off its 200 pages while I noted valuable tips on how to move forward with the publishing process. In fact, by the time I was finished reading this gem, nearly the entire book was highlighted. Furthermore, the book is written in such a down-to-earth tone that you'd better set an extra place because you'll feel as if Gallagher is sitting across from you at your kitchen table. So whether you're in the preliminary outline stage, in the midst of writing your manuscript, or giving it a final edit, read Gallagher's book before you launch yours. You'll be grateful you did. -- F. F.****************************************** | |||||||||
| " Gallagher's book includes everything you need to know to decide whether POD is right for you, and provides a wealth of information about how to choose the right POD publisher (love the side-by-side comparison chart of the top 10 POD firms) as well as tips on writing and marketing the book." -- K.J.E.
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For writers, few steps in the publishing process are as strange as the state of suspended animation between submitting a manuscript and seeing the book appear in stores. The sudden change in cabin pressure from writing to waiting can be jarring — and can last a very long time. “It comes as a huge shock when it happens the first time,” said the Irish writer Colm Toibin, whose first novel, “The South,” appeared in 1990, a year and a half after he turned it in. “It was all slow and strange.”
... Of interest to all authors, the essay concludes:
The presidential election in November should help move political books, but other titles may suffer. Nan Graham, the editor in chief of Scribner, said she was releasing very little fiction from July to January. “I’m never publishing a novel in the fall of an election year,” she said. “I feel bad about every single person whose novel I published in the fall of ’04 because they absolutely got no attention or no sales.” Other publishers worry that in election season it’s hard to get coverage for nonpolitical titles in book pages and on radio and television, especially “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report,” which have become central to publishers’ publicity strategies.
Whether it’s Comedy Central or the Internet, the same media that can call attention to a book are also drawing attention away from readers. So word of mouth is still the name of the game. “If you’re trying to explain this to someone from Mars or the Harvard Business School, they’d kind of scratch their head and say, ‘There must be a better way,’” Kirshbaum, the former Time Warner Book Group chairman, said. “But so far neither Martians nor H.B.S.-ers have solved this riddle.”
Full essay here - requires NYTimes free log-in
After a flurry of workshops and events lately, people ask where they can purchase Release Your Writing: Book Publishing Your Way.
