Photo by Friar's Balsam[/add_caption_link]

Elsewhere in the news:

You’ll find everyone all over the internet talking about Philip Roth taking the Booker International Prize. The key here, of course, being that one of the three judges immediately resigned from the committee upon hearing the news. Most definitely not a fan of Roth’s fiction, Carmen Callil told journalists, “It’s as though he’s sitting on your face and you can’t breathe.” The Book Bench, over at The New Yorker, tries to give a little background on Callil’s rather eccentric comment.

Callil is a founder of Virago Press, a British imprint which is the largest publisher devoted to women’s writing in the world. In 1996, it published, “Leaving a Doll’s House,” a memoir by Roth’s ex-wife Claire Bloom, which told all about their marriage and then some in scathing tones (here’s a review at the Times). In 1998, Roth published his novel “I Married a Communist,” which concerns a McCarthy-era radio star brought to ruin when his treacherous wife publishes a book exposing him as a Communist. The reaction in the British press was tortured: Roth was a genius, but score-settling didn’t flatter him. Did he hate women? Did he not? Did Bloom deserve it? Had Roth deserved it?

In what has become an immensely popular article, author Jess Row examines the pulse of the contemporary novel. Is it still beating? Find out in the Boston Review.

Today, too, in the literary world, a certain aristocracy sees its sun setting: the aristocracy of critics, editors, publishers, and tastemakers, still overwhelmingly white, if slightly less overwhelmingly male, who may be just beginning to realize that—for simple demographic reasons, if nothing else—the future does not belong to them. And so over the last decade, all the features of “Modern Fiction”—the relentless need to bifurcate; the urgent declaration of the new; the overblown, almost apocalyptic, need for a single definition, a final answer—have returned with a vengeance.

Fancy yourself a prose stylist? Over at Writer Unboxed, guest blogger Keith Cronin offers some helpful advice. Never, ever, consider using the word “verdant.”

My problem with verdant and the other words or phrases I’ve singled out is that they usually don’t ring true when I read them. They feel pretentious, as if they’ve been inserted by somebody who felt obligated to find a word less pedestrian than “green.”

Understandably disgusted at the recent closing of libraries across the country, poet Charles Simic asks us if we could really ever survive as a culture without our libraries. Read his comments in The New York Review of Books.

When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire. People everywhere are unhappy about these closings, and so are mayors making the hard decisions. But with roads and streets left in disrepair, teachers, policemen and firemen being laid off, and politicians in both parties pledging never to raise taxes, no matter what happens to our quality of life, the outlook is bleak. “The greatest nation on earth,” as we still call ourselves, no longer has the political will to arrest its visible and precipitous decline and save the institutions on which the workings of our democracy depend.

Don’t miss Flavorwire’s list of 10 Novels that Will Disturb Even the Coldest of Hearts.

Ever fallen in love with a phrase or a passage or even a symbol so deeply that you felt to get a tattoo of that very thing? Lisa Jane Persky explores the nature of the literary tattoo in the newly launched Los Angeles Review of Books (which you should follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/lareviewofbooks).

In September of last year, critic Elif Batuman published in the London Review of Books a lengthy indictment of Mark McGurl’s The Programme Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Just last week, having obviously stewed over the matter long enough, McGurl gave his response in a not-quite-as-lengthy essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Jumping to the defense of MFA programs, McGurl labels Batuman’s views as elitist. Then, as a kind of mediator, Laura Miller of Salon offered her opinion on the matter, which is essentially indifference.

To quote McGurl:

This is the other, complementary side of the egalitarianism of the creative writing program and its invitation to the social masses to think of themselves as potential writers. If craft means knowing your business; if it means understanding how stories work, how they are best structured to produce certain effects, what must be put in (including, possibly, lots of research about “real things in the world”) and what left out; if it means spending at least as many hours working on your writing as you expect readers to spend reading it, then there can never be enough concern for craft. Far from simply being an expression of shame, or a call to “workmanlike” mediocrity, craft is how one earns one’s pride in one’s writing.

So let’s not get discouraged. Instead let’s go back to our sentences, read them with all our painstaking care, and tinker with them some more.

Interview with Christina Thompson, Editor of Harvard Review

Christina Thompson is the editor of Harvard Review. Her essays and articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Vogue, American Scholar, the Journal of Pacific History, Australian Literary Studies, and in the 1999, 2000, and 2006 editions of Best Australian Essays. She lives near Boston with her husband and three sons.  

Photo by Patricia Drury[/add_caption_link]

I just saw on the Harvard Review blog that one of your contributors, Jess Row, had a story selected for the next edition of Best American Short Stories. In fact, works from Harvard Review have been included in such Best American anthologies for the past nine years out of ten. First of all, congratulations. Second of all, to what do you attribute this incredible track record?

Well, since then we’ve had two more Best American selections announced, both essays. So, we’re pretty pleased, especially given how few eligible pieces we publish (8-10 stories a year and about the same number of essays).

To me, this is an affirmation of our basic editorial principle, which is to publish the widest possible range of material — in terms of, style, subject matter, length, what have you — while still remaining true to the idea of literary merit.

I think a good editor is one with informed but also catholic taste, someone who understands how many different kinds of readers there are out there, but who also really gets what makes texts work. Not everyone will like everything we publish; but I like to think of myself as someone who can appreciate a fairly wide variety of kinds of writing.

So, the fact that pieces in Harvard Review get picked, year after year, for the Best American series, every volume of which is edited by a different guest editor, suggests to me that we are succeeding in finding lots of different voices.

Are there any writers Harvard Review is particularly proud of discovering? Can you tell us their publication story?

I have so many writers I’m proud of. I’m particularly pleased when we publish someone for the first time. I’ve done that quite a few times with young writers and several times with older writers, some of whom you might even describe as advanced in years. That may be the most gratifying publication of all. We recently published a piece called “Night School Confidential” by a writer named Jim Kelly who was just ecstatic to be published after years of working away in obscurity. I’m going to post some extracts from a letter he wrote me — the kind of letter that editors treasure — on the Harvard Review Blog.

In the Fall/Winter issue, you write quite eloquently about the difficulty of categorizing literary works based on the traditional genre labels—poetry, fiction, essay. For this issue, you created a new category, “Stories From Life,” which blends the narrative aspect of fiction with the realistic component of the essay. If you could create three new categories for your next issue, what would they be, and why?

I’m not sure “Stories from Life” was an unqualified success (again more about this in an upcoming blog post), but I do want to experiment some more with the idea of categories. My fiction editor suggested “Dispatches” and I quite like that, though it has a bit of the “Letter from Afar” feel to it. I think the word “Proem” is silly, but I like the idea; I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the prose poem. And I’ve always loved The New Yorker’s “Annals of….” But, honestly, I think it’s hard to come up with good categories. We talk a lot about the absurdities inherent in “Creative Nonfiction” — as if nonfiction were inherently uncreative — and the other day my managing editor, Laura Healy, suggested “Fictional Nonfiction,” which I quite like. Maybe we’ll try that next.

Many people reading this interview will live in the greater Boston area. Does Harvard Review have a special warm spot for stories that take place in Cambridge?

We do, actually. I remember particularly an essay by Andre Aciman called “Lavender” that was set in Harvard Square and featured, among other places, the drugstore on Brattle Street that sells a million kinds of perfume. I also liked an essay by David Gessner about tracking coyotes in the Boston area; I seem to remember there was one living in Revere.

What about stories that actually take place at Harvard University?

I don’t think we have any of these. We occasionally publish Harvard writers: faculty, fellows, staff, even students from time to time, but I can’t remember anything that was actually set at the university.

Speaking of Harvard, what is Harvard Review’s affiliation with the university?

Harvard Reviewis funded by Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library, so technically my managing editor and I (we are the only paid staff at Harvard Review and we both work half-time) are staff members in the rare books library, a fact which has given me immense pleasure over the years. Harvard Review is also supported by the Division of Continuing Education and an outside donor.

I walk through Harvard Yard every time I go to work. If I am submitting a story to Harvard Review, should I mention that in my cover letter?

You certainly could. We wouldn’t object to knowing it, but it won’t change where you are in the queue.

In addition to publishing outstanding works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, art, and reviews, Harvard Review has also developed an online edition, as well as a blog. How have these electronic developments added to or lessened your work as an editor?

Oh, dear, they have definitely added work, and not only for me but very significantly for my managing editor, who has primary responsibility for the website (the blog is my job). All these things have added to the workload; I would say we now effectively publish three instead of two issues a year. But there’s really no alternative. We want to keep the print journal going and it would be simply absurd not to take advantage of all the things you can do on the web.

I’ve recently written a longish piece about this for the Australian journal Meanjin which will be online in June (we’ll post a link to it on our website) — about some of the common problems faced by editors of established print journals and how we are addressing them at Harvard Review. So, yes, it’s a lot more work and it requires new thinking, but I have to say I really enjoying trying to figure it out. I mean, I’ve been doing the print thing for nearly 20 years; it’s fun to have some new challenges.

What exactly is your work as an editor? Is it fun? Tiresome? Stressful? Exciting? All of the above?

Let’s see, editing text is, for me, easy and fun; it’s the part that I find most natural and is clearly what has kept me in this business for so many years. Dealing with authors can be both gratifying and irritating (depending on the author); deadlines are tiresome; raising money is hard; putting an issue together is a stressful but also rewarding. Selecting material is probably one of the most difficult parts of the job. I have learned to trust my instincts over time, but there are always more good pieces than one has room for and so we have to reject a fair amount of perfectly publishable work. Still, we try to do it in a way that is encouraging, and I always tell writers not to take it personally. Everyone gets rejected from time to time, and it can be for any one of a million reasons, some of which have nothing to do with you or your piece.

What many people who are serious about their writing find is that first you get a lot of ordinary rejections, and then little by little you start to get rejections with personal notes, and gradually the balance shifts and you’re getting more of these and fewer of the ordinary ones and then, your work starts getting accepted. It’s a process with a learning curve, like just about everything else in life. So the main thing is to have a Zen attitude about it and to keep on plugging away.

Photo by Glen Edelson[/add_caption_link]

As of today, I happen to have several friends who are in the process of querying literary agents. These are people so insane as to attempt writing novels, and furthermore so disgustingly self-disciplined that they have seen their novels through until the very last page.

But the fun is not over for these hard-working lunatics. Oh no. Now they have to write their query letters. This is a one-page letter asking a particular agent to represent their book. While it may seem like an easy task, the query letter is an art unto itself.

As an expert in query-letter writing, having personally harassed over a thousand literary agents in the greater Tri-State area, I thought I’d share a few samples of flawed query letters so that you may learn from my mistakes. Don’t worry. These are not letters that I personally ever sent.

Well, not all of them.

Too loud:

Dear Sir!

I need your attention right now!!!

You have to represent my book immediately!!! This isn’t a joke! I need YOU! To represent! Me! And/or my BOOK!!!

THE MURPHYS TAKE MANHATTAN is hot off my printer and scalding my palms! I’m not kidding! My palms are covered in blisters! This is the most shocking story about the most amazing family in the history of the most horrifying world!

The family’s name is the Murphys!!! You will not believe what happens to them! But it is nonetheless harrowingly believable!!! At the incredible but all-too-possible opening of the book, the Murphys move to New York City, the COOLEST city in the world!!!!!!!!

Right away, something awful, terrible, and extremely bad happens! There’s an earthquake!!! Everyone explodes!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you imagine the horror??? Probably not! That’s why you need, ME, a writer, to imagine it for you!!!

I have enclosed my shockingly well-written 450-page manuscript for you to read right now !!! I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK!!!! May I call you? Don’t worry! I plan to anyway!!!

Have an awesome day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Becky Tuch!!!!

Too quiet:

To Whom It May Concern, Unless It Doesn’t Actually Concern You, In Which Case I’m Really Sorry To Bother You:

Hi. I hope I’m not interrupting your busy day. I also hope that you weren’t greatly troubled by clicking on the email to open this electronic query. Perhaps one day if/when we meet in person, I might massage the pads of your fingers.

Anyway, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to ask you about representing my novel. It’s not very good. It’s also longer than you’d probably like it to be. And it’s probably written in a stupid font. I was told that Courier looks writerly, but if this is a misunderstanding on my part, I’m really sorry.

The title of my novel is The Murphys Take Manhattan. It’s a dumb title. The plot’s pretty boring too. I had it workshopped 75 times and I’ve been revising it for the past six years. I think it might be the best I’m capable of.

I’m really sorry.

Please let me know if you’d like to see any pages or an outline. You probably won’t.

Even this query letter is terrible. I’m really sorry.

With sincere regret,

Becky Tuch

P.S. I hate my name and would be totally open to changing it.

P.P.S. That might be weird.

P.P.S.S. I’m really sorry.

Too casual:

Yo yo G-Money!

It’s me, all the way from Bizzoston to New Yizzork. I’m finally getting in touch about my WIP.

It’s not a WIP anymore, baby! Now it’s a full-blown W.

So check it. The Murphys Take Manhattan. There is a plot. So much stuff happens you wouldn’t believe. And characters, plenty of them. They talk and change and grow and sext. Yeah, dawg! So much sexting you wouldn’t believe. Teenagers, grown-ups, grandparents, everybody sexting, sexting, sexting. It’d be worrisome, if it weren’t for the fact that this novel is so damn good. So good you wouldn’t believe!

Think Armageddon meets Friends meets Brokeback Mountain meets The Wire. With sexting.

So when you wanna get together? Call me.

Or send a sext.

Peace out,

Bext (rhymes with you-know-what)

P.S. Sext!

Too formal:

Dear Madame,

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rebecca Lynn Tuch. With your kind permission, I would like to request your representation of my latest opus, The Murphys Take Manhattan, in which I have no doubt that you will find the various attributes of the most exceptional works of high-literary high-upmarket high fiction.

In regards to the narrative structure, you will find in my work something of the following sequence of events: A family of the appellate Murphy relocates to the coastal city of New York, only to find themselves the unwitting victim of that most tragic of events—an earthquake of Richter measurement nine. In the selection of words that I have carefully arranged in a meaningful and syntactical order, my belief is that you will find such vital elements as descriptive setting and well-paced narrative prose.

Additionally, you will experience a catharsis three quarters of the way through. This will likely be the result of numerous colluding forces: a well-timed epiphany experienced by a lovably flawed protagonist, a remarkably operatic denouement, and the friendliness, accessibility, and edgy-but-timeless appeal of Courier, my chosen font.

Without further ado, I would like to conclude this letter by emphasizing my ravenous yearning to commence publication of my writings.

With high regard,

Rebecca Lynn Tuch, née Tuchverderber

Too much information:

Dear Agent #192,

I found your listing in the Barnes and Noble Guide to Second Tier Agents. The book cost me $29.95. I am hoping that you will be interested in representing my novel, and also that at some point over the course of our professional relationship, you could pay me back for the cost of this book.

My novel, The Murphys Take Manhattan, is inspired by several traumas I suffered as a child, adolescent, and Adult Child (of Adult Children).

The first bad thing that happened to me was at the age of five. When I asked my mother when dinner would be ready, she responded by wrapping me in a sleeping bag and placing me inside the refrigerator. Who knew that refrigerator doors could be locked from the outside? Certainly not I.

Subsequently, when I was seventeen, my father was laid off from his job. My family’s poverty coupled with my father’s exceptionally large forehead soon made us the laughing stock of the neighborhood. Devastated by his tarnished reputation, my father came to believe that only one thing could save us. Thus it was that he performed the operation on my club foot. When you meet me, you will likely notice my tapered wooden leg with the wooden ball attached to the bottom.

“Why, her leg looks like an exclamation point!” you will think, and you will not be wrong.

Numerous tragedies have shaped my Adult Childhood. First there was the slamming of planes into the World Trade Center. Then there were two wars in the Middle East. Recently, there has been another war in Libya, a terrible earthquake in Japan (a country I’d never even heard of until a few weeks ago!), as well as worldwide economic crises, riots, homelessness, hunger, and disease.

Things have gotten so bad that I recently called my mother and requested that she put me back in the refrigerator for good. Unfortunately, she refuses to acknowledge the traumatic incident, insisting that I am only remembering it this way because I am, by nature, “emotionally chilly.”

I know what you’re thinking. With such a rich personal history, why not write a memoir? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times. The short answer is that I prefer the novel form. As for the long answer, please see the attached document, a compendium of essays entitled “My Life is So Crazy I Should Be Writing a Memoir But I’m Writing Fiction Instead: A Collection of Personal Essays.”

Because of all these experiences, I believe I am uniquely qualified to tell the story of a family living in New York, facing natural disaster. What is family life, afterall, if not a euphemism for Tornado of Shit?

I look forward to your response to my query letter (and the attached sixty-five pages of essays elaborating upon my query letter.) Additionally, I would appreciate you blocking out several hours for our first meeting.

Thanks in advance for the $29.95, as well as the hours of therapy our relationship will provide,

Becky Tuch

Too little information:

You.

Me.

Book.

Fame.

Gratitude.

B.

Photo by Emilian Robert Vicol[/add_caption_link]

Although one doesn’t necessarily want to quote Tom Wolfe if one can help it, in this case it’s rather irresistible:

That’s the kind of thing writers always want to know: What are other writers doing?

Undoubtedly it’s one of the symptoms of such a solitary line of work. Being so alone we want to know about the habits of other writers—their fixations and trials, their daily spectra of emotions and thought processes. It may be that struggling and aspiring novelists suffer from this voyeurism more than others. For the purposes of this experiment that is what we will assume.

Over at Writer Unboxed, author Lydia sharp has proposed the “7 R’s of Positivity for the Unpublished Novelist.” She encourages us to—among other things—remind ourselves of our successes: “Reminding yourself of the good others have seen in your work is an effective way to squelch any self-deprecating thoughts before they become so ugly that you consider giving up.” She begs us to reignite our passion: “Don’t underestimate how a small shift in perception or viewpoint can light a proverbial fire under your ass and put you back in the race.” In addition, we are to rejoice, redirect, remove, redefine, and rejuvenate. These are all necessary steps toward a healthy mental state for the unpublished novelist. Speaking from personal experience, it’s painfully easy to spiral into a detached and melodramatic state in which all you can feel is your heart pounding, in which you’re screaming as loud as you can and no one is listening or even turning around, in which you’re absolutely convinced that you’ll never—not for the rest of your life—see an acceptance letter of any kind. We all have to maintain sanity and Sharp’s simple list goes a long way to remind ourselves of that requirement, though she forgot something that might be too obvious to even mention. But we’re going to mention it anyway.

It’s crucial that we relax. Waiting for responses from agents and literary magazines and awards committees and in some cases graduate schools it’s no surprise that our hearts do what they do. You’re all too familiar with it, that sensation of your blood turning to mercury and tightening up all the already too tight places in your chest. Maybe today will bring good news, you’re always thinking, and when you do receive a response the rejection fills you with inconsolable doubt. You obsess over it, placing so much importance on the outcome—you absolutely must sell this book. You absolutely must find your way into a good magazine. The alternative is failure, is an eternal day job so disparate from the things you love that driving in every morning ties another knot in your noose. You convince yourself that your life is an unhappy one—all because of this seeming stagnation.

Over the first weekend in April I went backpacking on the north shore of Lake Superior. Our cabin was a backpack in only site and was built right on the shore of a small frozen lake. I woke up early the next morning. The woodstove was still warm. There was snow coming down over the lake. I went outside and stood on the porch and just watched it. There are so many clichés built around the idea of getting out of the city, of getting away from your life, but of course most clichés become so because of some element of truth. In the complete silence looking out over that lake I asked myself if it was really worth getting so bent out of shape over something like a query letter or a short story submission. When I came back inside I read for a while by the fire, then wrote a few pages in my journal. I realized, by some miracle of the heart, that I need to stop doing this to myself. I need to relax. We all need to relax.

Of course by relax I don’t actually mean relax. I mean that we must change our outlook and perception of this whole process. In truth, what do we find most relaxing? When are our minds at their most recumbent yet fulfilled? It’s not the business side of writing—not at all. Do any of us really enjoy writing query letters? That involves some kind of extroverted act—a form of reaching out to another in such a direct way that it feels alien. What we prefer is the more indirect route—the separation of communication. There’s nothing we writers love more than writing. There’s nothing more relaxing than pushing sentences across the page. That’s what we need to do.

As mentioned above, relaxation is simply a state of mind. It’s the absence of worry and anxiety. It’s the moment at which you remember that there’s only one thing you can do and that is write. Once a short story leaves your desk—once a query letter meanders off into the ether—the only thing left to do is turn back in on yourself, scour the dark places of your heart for inspiration, and keep dragging sentences from its depths. Even if the work you’re sending out is rejected you must remember that one doesn’t become a better writer by wringing one’s hands and imagining all the possible consequences of a little envelope in the mail. One becomes a better writer by writing. So go back to your desk and get creative. You’ll be happier that way anyway, and what matters more than happiness? Even if it takes ten or twenty years to get that acceptance letter, at least you’ll be doing something you love all the while. So relax. Shut out what you can’t control and get back to work. It’s what we live for.

Photo by Alan Cleaver[/add_caption_link]

The process of writing is thrilling. Even in the last stages of revision the amateur novelist is overwhelmed by the potential, by all the ways in which this novel could be perfect. What makes writing bearable is the fact that the writer is in complete control. Everything that goes into it is yours. Every design is yours—every clause and simile and iamb. There’s nothing that’s beyond you and there’s nothing that can elude you. As long as you are working on the novel the possibility of perfection is still there.

Unfortunately there comes a time when you can’t stand it any longer. In pregnancy these are the days when your ankles crack in the morning and you can only lie on your side, when even the thought of getting up in the night is unbearable but wholly necessary. Get this thing out of me, you are thinking, and one day—it’s all very sudden—you have a beautiful baby novel slick with blood and sweat.

Now you have no control. You are sending your novel out into the world and what is completely unavoidable about this is the waiting. An agent’s response—if he or she does respond—generally comes within two to four weeks, but in our amateur novelist’s experience is usually closer to four. During those four weeks all control has been surrendered and everything about the novel is now out of your power. And you thought the mood swings during the writing process were unpleasant. One day you scribble the usual angst in your journal and three days later you’ve never been more optimistic. You write letters to your friends and acquaintances in which you profess yourself to be unable to take another day of waiting. As you haunt the front hallway waiting for the mail, constantly checking your e-mail on your phone, that day passes, and of course nothing changes. The tectonic plates don’t move and the sun doesn’t vanish and the rivers don’t turn to blood. You keep waiting.

What does one do in this situation? In your letters you keep mentioning that in all this chaos there is only one thing still under your control: writing. If it’s so easy to identify, why can’t you internalize it? Why can’t you forget about the agents and the editors and the literary magazines and simply peck away at the next short story, at the outline for your next novel? Why is it so easy to get caught up in the fantasy of acceptance letters and manuscript requests?

Regardless of the temptation you must exert that one remaining element of control. You have to keep writing. The rejection letters will come in and the cover and query letters will go out and you will keep trying. In the meantime you must write. It’s the only way, you’ve come to understand, that you can be happy. Write every day if you can because every day needs some hint of hope. That’s what it all comes down to really, that little doe-eyed hope that keeps offering itself up for immolation, over and over, every day. You watch that hope crumble into all its little snowflake ashes, knowing you’ll offer it up again tomorrow. You’ll keep trying and you’ll keep writing because that’s what you do, at least if you want to call yourself a writer. We’ve all heard it before. Writers write. It’s what separates us from the “writers.”

So no, there’s no need to panic.

In the news over the last week:

In case you hadn’t heard, a federal judge has thrown a monkey wrench into Google’s plan to digitize every book ever written. Apparently they had overlooked the concept of copyright. Google may have to wait a while longer to become the lord and savior of all the world’s information.

Citing copyright, antitrust and other concerns, Judge Denny Chin said that the settlement went too far. He said it would have granted Google a “de facto monopoly” and the right to profit from books without the permission of copyright owners.

In considering the Hollywood romanticism surrounding writer’s block, Salon author Laura Miller tries to get to the heart of the age old problem. She may have come up with a solution.

In other words, beyond a certain point, the more difficult a writing task, and the more you think it matters, the more likely you are to become blocked. This may explain why journalists with, say, two deadlines per week almost never get blocked: no individual story ever has to carry that much weight. (The paycheck helps a lot, too. Not long ago, a woman sitting next to me on a plane asked if I had a trick for getting past writer’s block, and I replied, “Yes. It’s called a mortgage.”)

Everyone has been talking about millionaire author Amanda Hocking. At 26, Hocking’s nine self-published novels have made her more of a household name than most traditionally published authors. She continues to surprise us, announcing that she will now make a move toward the traditional publishing system.

“I think a lot of authors are looking at self-publishing as a way to perhaps make a certain amount of money sooner rather than later,” [publisher Matthew Shear] said. “But a publisher provides an extraordinary amount of knowledge into the whole publishing process. We have the editors, we have the marketers, we have the art directors, we have the publicists, we have the sales force. And they can go out and get Amanda’s books to a much, much bigger readership than she had been able to get to before.”

That was what made Ms. Hocking seek a traditional publisher, she said, after months of hearing from readers who were frustrated that they couldn’t find her books in stores. She was also tired of spending time formatting her books, designing covers and hiring freelance editors — all tasks that fall to the self-publishing author.

Ever wonder if the publishing industry today is moving away from nurturing literary novelists and concentrating on the big buck sellers? Writer and critic Dale Peck thinks so, and that’s exactly why he’s helped form Mischief + Mayhem–an alternative to the big market publishers.

It’s time, said Peck, for a new kind of publishing. “Readers of the world unite,” he proclaimed, his greatcoat billowing open to reveal a red silk tie over a red T-shirt. “You have nothing to lose but the chains.”

In “celebration” of National Poetry Month, Oprah’s O Magazine announces “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.” Poet and critic David Orr offers his insight into Oprah’s strange relationship with literature.

The magazine also encourages a number of poets to discuss the art, although mostly in one- or two-sentence asides. Unfortunately, they’re opining on topics like “where poems come from,” and this is exactly the kind of abstract speculation that summons forth Magical Poetry Talk — comments that make poetry sound like God’s own electric Kool-Aid acid test — from even the smartest writers.

Ancient graffiti? In case you were wondering if Greeks and Romans professed their love, ridiculed their enemies, and embraced nihilism on public surfaces, they totally did.

And of course I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t share a newly published essay by the late Roberto Bolaño. Read all about his love affair with the codex in the New York Review of Books.

After that, after I stole that book and read it, I went from being a prudent reader to being a voracious reader and from being a book thief to being a book hijacker. I wanted to read everything, which in my innocence was the same as wanting to uncover or trying to uncover the hidden workings of chance that had induced Camus’s character to accept his hideous fate. Despite what might have been predicted, my career as a book hijacker was long and fruitful, but one day I was caught.

Until next week–!

Readers of my earlier articles will recall my preference for secrecy. Until recently, nobody knew anything about Rebellious Bird. An overzealous psychologist would be happy to explain this as an extreme fear of failing, of keeping others at an appropriate distance so as not to let the book—or its writer—become vulnerable in the event of abandonment or disaster. An overzealous writer will simply say it was none of your business.

But things have changed. Now it is your business. More importantly, it’s an agent’s business. My book is no longer an artistic endeavor over which to grind one’s teeth and ingest uncomfortable quantities of caffeine. It is no longer a work in progress. It’s simply a work. It has ceased to be my art and has now become my product. It is something I have to sell.

Where creativity and business intersect is where you have to bare all the secrets, where you have to stop clinging to this romantic idea of letting the book speak for itself. The agent search demands that you compress the entire extravagance of your novel—the entire complexity—into a terse 150 words. This is the plot hook—the synopsis—and it’s dreadfully important. It’s also, by chance, dreadfully hard to write.

Writing the plot hook takes a certain skill—again where creativity and business intersect. You not only have to be a writer but you have to be a salesman. You’re putting a spin on your novel to make it exciting, to make the agent or editor want to read beyond those five to ten pages included in your query, if they’re included at all. You have to do everything in your power to convince this reticent reader to request additional material. You have to work whatever charm you can summon from deep within yourself.

Photo by derrypubliclibrary[/add_caption_link]

As I’m sending out query letters I’m constantly revising my plot hook. A side effect of this is that you always feel stupid for sending out the previous incarnation. Still—you persevere. Even though there are a finite number of agents there are still a great many of them. Maybe by the time you finally have the art of the plot hook enslaved by your own concise brilliance you’ll find that one agent who has been waiting his or her entire career for a book like yours. That’s what we all dream about, isn’t it?

Some off the cuff advice:
1: Always include your protagonist’s name, if he or she has one
2: Try to give some hint of the time and place, either directly or indirectly (if the agent requests a manuscript that he or she thinks is set in 16th century Europe and it turns out to be in modern day San Francisco, he or she might question your ability to communicate)
3: An obvious one that believe me it’s possible to overlook: INCLUDE THE CENTRAL CONFLICT OF YOUR STORY—don’t spell it out, per se, but make the book seem worth the risk of reading
4: Don’t compare your work to other writers, especially canonical ones—it just seems arrogant
5: Stay away from abstractions as much as possible (“A complex argument against sadness” or “A re-interpretation of what it means to feel angry”)
6: Write your synopsis how you wrote your novel—with the same ecstasy and precision—don’t make it dry and academic

So—that said—we keep on querying. Let’s wish ourselves no small bit of luck and go out and sell a novel.

***
1: Please be advised that I’ve broken this rule

You know who we should all envy? Those diligent writers in charge of The Book Bench. To be paid to scour the internet for literary news is possibly the day job I covet most. One day, perhaps–until then the news is an extra-curricular activity.

Illustration credit: Steve Powers

Every whole person has ambitions, objectives, initiatives, goals. This one particular boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body.

Still stuck on Michael Chabon’s abandoned Fountain City–parts of which were annotated and published in McSweeney’s Quarterly–the literary world wants to know why writers give up on novels.

Authors, always sensitive creatures, might abandon a book in a fit of despair, as Stephenie Meyer initially did in 2008 with her “Twilight” spinoff “Midnight Sun,” which she declared herself “too sad” to finish after 12 chapters leaked to the Internet. More dramatically, in 1925 Evelyn Waugh burned his unpublished first novel, “The Temple at Thatch,” and attempted to drown himself in the sea after a friend gave it a bad review. (Stung by jellyfish, Waugh soon returned to shore.)

Since every writer seems to have advice for other writers, Oliver Miller has decided to assemble his own list of rules, in the spirit of Elmore Leonard.

And also, being a poor writer sounded kind of romantic to me when I was, say, 18 years old. And being a poor writer is kind of romantic — for a while. It becomes less romantic when you’re 30 and can’t afford to buy a soda when it’s hot out, and can’t afford to have a girlfriend because that would actually involve paying to go to a restaurant or something. So. There’s that. So if you can’t handle being really really poor, then stop now.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, poet and essayist Meghan O’Rourke waxes pensive on the nature of cadence in prose–the lost art of composing a symphonic sentence.

Rhythm isn’t just decorative. It serves a purpose even in a book like “Moby-Dick,” which aspires to social realism. Melville could well have made his opening line “Call me Richard”—it was a popular American name then as now—but it lacks the tragic Old Testament resonance of Ishmael. It also doesn’t sound as good as Ishmael, whose two gentler stresses balance out the sentence’s strikingly stressed first word. What’s more, “Call” and “el” chime off each other, resulting in a sentence that’s as sonorous and inviting as “Call me Richard” plainly isn’t.

Last but not least, an essay in West 86th recalls the writing habits of Roland Barthes–the physicality of putting pen to paper–and what communication means in our digital world.

I have often asked myself why I enjoy writing (manually, that is) to such a great extent that usually the pleasure of having a nice sheet of paper and a good pen in front of me (as if it were the work bench of the bricoleur) makes up for the often thankless tasks of intellectual labor. Even as I reflect on what I should write (as is happening at this very moment), I feel my hand move, turn, connect, dive, rise, and often enough, as I make my corrections, erase or even obliterate a line. This field expands until it reaches the margins, thus creating, out of seemingly functional and minuscule traces (letters), a space which is quite simply that of art. I am an artist, not because I represent an object, but more fundamentally, because, as I write, my body shudders [jouit] with the pleasure of marking itself, inscribing itself, rhythmically, on the virgin surface (virginity being the infinitely possible). . . . Writing is not only a technical activity, it is also a bodily practice of jouissance.

La Liseuse, by Jean-Jacques Henner

It’s an exciting time. Writers are asking important questions: Does my voice count? Am I and are writers like me getting fair representation in the public realm? Have I been held back and/or holding myself back? If I have been held back, why?

Similarly, editors of small journals and larger glossies are taking time to assess the history of their publications, asking themselves difficult questions: Do I fairly represent all voices? Are my reading preferences biased, and is that bias based on gender? Can I do more as an editor to ensure that everyone gets fairly heard? What is my role here, and how can my magazine become more diverse?

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a tangible wave sweeping through publishing. Dare I say, it’s a veritable movement.

All this makes me happy.

And yet, critic that I am, I’d like to pause for just one moment, lest we lose sight of something important: Content.

In the fever over which authors get adequately represented in bookstores, on shelves, in magazines, and in the pages of small journals, it is important that we also consider which characters get depicted within literary works themselves. Which heroes and which heroines? Fighting for which causes? Using which methods? And with what end results?

While editors and publishers might begin to seek out woman writers to balance their contributors lists, I worry that this effort may constitute little more than superficial change, mere window dressing on an otherwise dysfunctional social structure.

Thus I would like to caution readers, writers, and editors against putting too much emphasis on numbers alone. If, for instance, The New Yorker suddenly began seeking woman writers to fill its pages, that would be a good thing. But if these women writers wrote articles and stories that devalued women, that championed the limiting of women’s rights, or otherwise reinforced a patriarchal status quo, I would not call that progress.

Sadly, I can think of numerous women whose books, and the messages contained therein, actually hurt other women. Yes, they are women who are achieving success in male-dominated fields. Yes, they have been published. But I cannot say that their writing does much in the way of achieving equality between the sexes.

It’s unfortunate that the conversation should even create this either/or bifurcation. Women, like men, are complex creatures, holding a variety of political views and living across race and class spectrums. Women, like men, have a variety of tastes, and for every taste a different writing style, with different subject matter that interests them. How many women love to write stories from the points of view of men? How many men love to tell stories about women? (No one’s taught me more about what it is to be a woman oppressed by both class and gender than Gustave Flaubert!)

Nonetheless, the conversation has become about numbers for obvious reasons. When looking at the ghastly figures–in some major commercial magazines, women book reviewers a mere 4% of all reviewers–how could we not notice this stark suppression of female voices? How could we, as women, not feel hurt, outraged, demoralized, shocked, and frankly pissed off?

We can and many of us do.

Still, there is more to consider. If we wish to ensure that our reading material remains democratic, lively, relevant, and humane, we must look beyond the numbers.

Editors who have genuinely sought engaged subject matter and varied literary styles among submissions have observed that an equal gender balance arises naturally. This phenomenon was commented upon by Jeanne Leiby of Southern Review, Rebecca Morgan Frank of Memorious, and Joanne Merriam of 7×20, among others. Such editors work hard to produce journals that are not merely of a high quality, but which also display diverse characters in a range of milieus, stories narrated from various perspectives, and poetry in a range of styles. When diversity in content is sought, greater equality appears to be organically attained.

Similarly, writers interested in issues of social justice may begin by asking certain questions of their work: How do my characters define themselves? What gives their lives meaning? Do their struggles exist in isolation, or is society somehow taken into account? Are the characters fully-dimensional, with virtues as well as flaws, or are they composites of familiar stereotypes? Does the story’s end offer hope for change? Does the ending condemn the characters’ choices in some way? If you are writing outside your comfort zone, you may want to consider having people unlike yourself read your work and give you feedback.

Experimental and avant-garde writing often has explicit or implicit political messages. Because this genre usually emphasizes language and texture, deliberately de-emphasizing content, it’s much harder to talk about issues of character, story, or social milieu. The only thing I would suggest is that if you are writing experimental work, be sure to articulate–if only to yourself–your specific vision. Many feminist literary critics have spoken of experimental writing as inherently disruptive to patriarchy, in that it subverts traditional, linear narrative forms. On the other hand, several avant-garde poets have gone on to support Fascist regimes. Unless you envision yourself as the next Mussolini, experiment with care.

Ultimately, determining the message of a particular work is a much more subjective and nebulous venture than tracking numerical data. In many cases, the more entertaining a work of art, the more difficult to unpack its meaning. Throughout history, the most oppressive political systems have found ways to disseminate ideology through the most beautiful works of art.

It makes sense that questions of fairness would begin with inquiries into how many women versus men are getting published. I do believe this is a start. The numbers revealed by VIDA have been absolutely appalling.

But this cannot be the end of the discussion.

After all, in time what will our nieces, daughters, and granddaughters remember—The story about yet another disgruntled male professor who cheats on his wife, written by a woman? Or the story of a woman who wants more from life than marriage and motherhood…written by a man?

http://vidaweb.org/the-count-2010http://vidaweb.org/the-count-2010

I love Amazon. I love that before I leave for a trip, I can click onto Amazon and quickly order the exact books I’ll need to sustain me on my journey. I love that Amazon lets you listen to CD’s before you buy them. And I have greatly enjoyed the recommendations that Amazon has made for me based on my previous orders.

Plus, I own a kindle. It wasn’t so much a holiday gift as my dad handing it to me and saying, “I can’t figure out how to use this shit. If you want it, take it.” I myself have not yet figured out how to use said shit, but I will soon enough, as I did the i-pod once all my favorite record stores went out of business.

What troubles me about Amazon, however, far outweighs the few pleasures I derive from it. For one thing, before Amazon existed, I never found going to a bookstore to be an inconvenience. That it may now be perceived as such seems little more than manufactured need, kind of like my favorite face cream upgrading to an allegedly better (and more expensive) formula when the first one seemed to be just fine.

Perhaps more importantly, I wonder what will happen to our neighborhoods and communities when we continually place “convenience” as our primary value. When the bookstores, record and video stores are all gone, as are their typically quirky and knowledgeable employees, what will fill our sidewalks? Cell phone retailers? Real estate offices? Industrial condominiums that block out the sky?

Well okay. Suppose we concede that it’s short-sighted to value personal convenience over the collective benefits of community. Still, Amazon simply offers a wider array of products. Will the local bookstore have all of Balzac’s early novels? How about the rare guide to stamp collecting that I covet? Sure, the bookstore can order them. But what if I want to read the blurbs or look inside the books immediately?

Similarly, what if I live in a rural town where the only bookstore is five miles from my home? Or if I live within a homogeneous population, say a Mormon enclave in Utah, or a Hasidic community on the Borscht Belt? Does not Amazon offer great opportunities for more diverse (and potentially better) education to people with limited access to books?

Of course it does. As do the internet’s many other wholesale distributors of products and information, such as Netflix and wikipedia. Both of these are resources I use regularly. I can no more imagine doing research without wikipedia than I can imagine my evenings without Netflix’s instantly downloadable documentaries and TV programs.

Still, these resources must all be consumed with caution. Wikipedia does not have everything, nor is it completely reliable. (It is necessarily limited by the biases and values of its contributing writers.) Amazon may on its surface appear diverse, comprehensive and democratic in its wide array of offerings. Yet its danger lies in its monopolization of the power over what so many read. Suppose that tomorrow, founder Jeff Bezos decided to exclude all books written by women? Or all novels depicting homosexual relationships?

Perhaps this sounds unthinkable in our open market. Yet just a year ago, “Amazon de-ranked hundreds of gay- and lesbian-themed books,” writes Onnesha Roychoudhuri in the November/December issue of The Boston Review. “Without a sales rank, the visibility of the titles plummeted.” Though the books were eventually made available once again, Amazon representatives offered little explanation as to what happened, nor were any changes made to safe-guard similar actions in the future.

In fact, many publishing houses are starting to regard the mega-franchise as somewhat of a bully. From aggressive phone calls attempting to coerce small presses into unfair pricing schemes to in-person threats, Amazon has been far from a friendly face. “Dennis Loy Johnson, head of Melville Publishing…received a visit from a cadre of Amazon employees at a book convention…’ They kept saying, ‘Why aren’t you participating in the program [the Amazon co-op which enables publishers to have their books listed on the site]?’…I told them I couldn’t afford it. They countered that Johnson ‘couldn’t afford not to.’” (Roychoudhuri)

And who could forget the whirlwind couple of days during which Macmillan refused to cooperate with  Amazon’s book markdowns for the Kindle? Macmillan CEO John Sargent flew out to speak with Amazon execs, hoping to negotiate a pricing model that would be fair to publishers and writers. Before Sargent even got off his plane, Amazon had removed the buy buttons from all Macmillan books. (They were later replaced, but the vulnerability of writers and publishers was felt around the world.)

While Amazon consistently argues that its low prices are better for readers–who doesn’t love saving an average of $15 on a new hardcover?-one can’t help but wonder if this will be good for readers over the long-term. What will happen when writers stop receiving royalties because their books are being sold so cheaply? How will alternative and small presses continue to operate when they can no longer compete within Amazon’s pricing scheme? (Books are sold from publishing houses to Amazon, usually at a discount, though Amazon has been stepping up the pressure for greater discounts, and small presses are feeling the hit.)

Eventually, fewer small press offerings will be very bad for readers who prefer less mainstream or more diverse reading fare. In fact, as large corporations such as Barnes and Noble, Walmart and Target  have increasing influence over how a book is produced (offering input on everything from storyline to book cover to book title), and then offer their books at drastically lower prices than the traditional $25 price, it’s possible that offerings to readers will become increasingly narrow. Goodbye unconventional characters. Goodbye literary experimentation. Goodbye careful line-editing.

Within Amazon itself, many readers don’t realize that the books being recommended to them are not exactly the fairest sample of titles. Rather, they are part of just one of Amazon’s many algorithms, “the result of paid promotions.” (Roychoudhuri) These promotions lean heavily on the best-sellers as opposed to the books that might in fact better suit a reader’s needs. It is also common for the same books to be offered at different prices to different customers, depending on on a reader’s purchase history. So much for diverse and democratic offerings.

So–what can writers do? What must writers do?

I’d love to say that we should all be boycotting Amazon and supporting our local bookstores. Yet the enormous price disparity between the two often makes such a recommendation unrealistic.

Perhaps then we should be ordering our books strictly from Barnes and Noble? Not a bad idea, except that the stock is simply not as comprehensive. Furthermore, is it really effective to trade one mega-corporation for another?

One good move has come from The Author’ s Guild. In order to help writers keep track of their books, they created WhoMovedMyButton.com. Here writers can educate themselves about Amazon’s “Buy-Buttonology” and receive notification should Amazon make books unavailable for purchase. (Though what power individual writers have to actually change their book’s status once Amazon makes such a move, I do not know.)

The Authors’ Guild seems to have the right idea. That is, writers need to help other writers. Group blogs, women writer groups, language poets, experimental novelists–whatever your ilk and whatever your identification, perhaps now is the time for writers to work collectively to discuss and solve these problems. Rather than forming individual enterprises (another blog, another literary magazine), perhaps we ought to focus our energy on what commonalities we share, and how we can build on one another’s strengths. (This is of course not to disparage blogs or lit mags, but merely to encourage writers to find ways to work together in collectives, so that we are less solitary and that the strength of our numbers may truly be felt.)

Beyond that, I look out and I turn to you, dear reader. What do you think of Amazon? A wonderful resource or an invasive plant within contemporary literature?  Has Amazon affected your writing career? What have you done in response?