Seven fascinating (mostly writing-related) articles

I'm going away for 10 days (whoo hoo!), so I thought I'd leave you lovely readers with some articles I suggest you peruse in my absence. If you read any of them, I'd love to hear what you think!

1. Losing your whole town
Imagine that you don't only have to walk away from the house you bought and paid for and lived in and loved. Everyone else around you has to do the same. And the general store, the library, the post office--they all have to pack up and leave, too. All because of an underground coal fire that could have been put out when it first started, almost FIFTY years ago.
That's exactly what's going on in a small town in PA.

There's already some non-fiction books on the town's strife, which I plan to read. But I think there might be the seed of a fictional story in there, too. Imagine the family dramas that could be told amongst this heartbreaking, almost unbelievable backdrop.

2. Some Very Funny Dos and Donts of Writing
Thanks to Robyn for pointing me to this awesome and funny article by a debut novelist, Tony DuShane. My two favorite "dos and donts":

Don't: Get in this game if you don't absolutely love literature. Let me take that back, don't get in this game if literature hasn't saved your life somehow. Don't get into this game for the money. Don't get into this game while wondering if you should Tweet your novel online to show your digital forward thinking.

Do: Read and write. Read and write. And write. And write. It's like learning to play guitar and you play "Stairway to Heaven," and after you master that you play other songs.

3. An ode to the London Review of Book's personal ads.
This article is so quirky and funny--just my type! If I ever needed to place a personal ad, I'd totally do it in the London Review of Books. In the meantime, I'll check out the compilation books of the ads.

4. Seth Godin on creativity.
So many great gems in this article on creativity. Here's my favorite. This quote has really stuck with me in the weeks since I first read it:

For me, the single best thing you can do to become more creative is to be wrong more often. Creative people are wrong all the time (look at Apple's long string of failures). The goal is to create a safe place to be wrong, a way to be wrong without destroying yourself. The more wrong I am, the more often, the better I seem to get at being creative.


5. What makes a word sound good?
I found this NY Times article on the sound of words fascinating. I'm guessing the poets out there will particularly like it. Again, a favorite quote from it:
"Poetry, in fact, is two quite distinct things,” H. L. Mencken wrote in a 1920 magazine column. “It may be either or both. One is a series of words that are intrinsically musical, in clang-tint and rhythm, as the single word 'cellar-door' is musical. The other is a series of ideas, false in themselves, that offer a means of emotional and imaginative escape from the harsh realities of everyday.”


6. On Rejection.
I thought this Glimmer Train essay on rejection started a bit slow, but man was I glad I stuck with it when I got to the end:

The odds of winning the Nobel or becoming a perennial bestseller are astronomical. So why do we keep putting our heads on the chopping block when we can clearly see the worn dull blade dangling by a thread above? We don't do this in other facets of our lives, in which we are far more pragmatic and make decisions based on evidence. We don't put ourselves at risk when we know that odds are we are going to get hurt.

So why do we do it?

Because we are in love, and looking for those with whom we can share that love.

Which is why rejection, particularly in your love life, is good training for being a writer. Because your work, if it's true, is you—the culmination and symbol of your heart, your passion, your hopes and dreams. Your work is everything you want and need to make things right in the world—it's what sets you apart from the rest, what makes you believe that all the devotion, dedication, and the grueling brutal daily grind to produce actually means something.


7. The second book from the author of the Time Traveler's Wife!
Anyone who loved the Time Traveler's Wife will probably be interested in this interview with author Audrey Niffenegger about her new book.

Libraries and e-books

After reading this NY Times article on libraries buying and loaning e-books, I'm left with two clashing views. I love libraries. I borrow books just about every week. I read a ton, and if I were to buy every book I read, I'd be broke and have a house that was condemnable due to clutter. And in a broader sense, I think it's only right that literature be available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it. In this vein, I don't see why libraries shouldn't buy the rights to e-books and lend them out like they do traditional books.

That said, I know how much work goes into creating a book. Writers deserve to be paid for that work (much more than most published writers are currently paid). I hope to publish a book some day soon. I hope to make money off that book so I can devote more of my time to writing. So I'm sympathetic to the worries of publishers and authors that no one will buy an e-book if they can get it for free from their library. This argument doesn't apply in the same way to print books--when you buy a print book, you get something you can keep on your shelf and lend to a friend. The same is not true when you buy an e-book. So while I sometimes go out and buy books that I read in the library and really loved and want to own, I can't imagine the same would be true for something I read on my computer/Ipod/whatever other devise one might have.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this debate. Please comment away!

An essay in Tweets about working at the New Yorker

I seem to be on a New Yorker kick. Here's an interesting article by Dan Baum about his experience writing for the New Yorker, which ran as a series of Tweets (which is a medium I have yet to understand the point of, but that's a topic for another post). I love hearing about writers' lives and experiences, and I was especially interested since the New Yorker is, of course, the creme de la creme. Baum also very generously posts on his web sites the article queries that got him into the New Yorker and other mags, and the ones that got rejected. What a model of helping aspiring writers!

Can Writing Be Taught?

Poetmom posted a link to this interesting New Yorker article on MFA program. It talks about the question of whether writing can be taught, and if not, then what is the point of MFA programs in the first place?

The piece is a reaction to a recent book called "The Program Era" by Mark McGurl, which talks about the huge rise in MFA programs in recent history (which, I learned through the article, was first due to the fact that WWI Vets could only get government money for degree programs, so MFA programs sprouted up as a way for vets to take creative writing classes for free).

Here is my reaction to the article. I'd love to hear yours, too!

First, the question of whether writing can be taught. I think writing takes three things:
1. Stick-to-it-iveness. Writing is hard and lonely, and often filled with rejections. You've got to have immense perseverance not to give up. Oh, and did I mention that writers are usually not paid for their work, or at least not up front, while they're actually doing it?

2. Talent/creativity.

3. Knowledge. Knowledge about literature, about the structure of a story/novel/poem, about what works and what doesn't.

Of these three, number 1 is most important, in my mind. I don't think you can make someone be more dedicated, or more "sticky". But talking about how much perseverance writing takes can help people realize every writer feels like writing is a tough, tough thing that they occasionally want to give up on. That can be an invaluable lesson.

Number 2, inspiration, can't be taught. It can be given room to blossom, but that's different than teaching someone how to have talent or be creative.

Number 3, knowledge about writing and literature, can certainly be taught. I came out of my MFA program with much more knowledge on these subjects that's one of the things I came out of my MFA program that I did not have going in.

What's also discussed in the article is the things outside of learning to write that one gets from an MFA program. From my MFA experience, the most important were:

**The ability to make my writing a priority. As the New Yorker writer, Louis Menand, put it, "to actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon)."

**A sense of community, and some of the best friends I'll probably ever have. Again, to quote from the article, (this from a part where Menand talks about his own experience studying poetry): "I just thought that this stuff mattered more than anything else, and being around other people who felt the same way, in a setting where all we were required to do was to talk about each other's poems, seemed like a great place to be." Amen to that.

Good article

As many of you know, I love my local library. This NY Times article is about a brave man in Columbia who brings the library to people in remote locations--he rides a donkey and drags the books behind him. What an inspiration!

A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Mr. Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.

Nothing to say...Good article on writing

I haven't posted in a while because, frankly, I've had nothing to say. I'm dealing with some stuff that is keeping me from writing. And since I don't want to go into that stuff I just haven't been posting.

But I read a great article on Writer's Digest's web site today that I thought I would share:
http://writersdigest.com/article/writers-life-giving-it-up/

It's by a recent MFA graduate who is having doubts about his writing. (Sound familiar?)

Here are two of my favorite passages:

Worst of all, there was no one pushing me forward—no thesis advisor demanding pages, no editor lashing me to finish before deadline, no father demanding I get out of his hot tub and start writing.

Everyone talks about doing things—how they have an idea for a book or magazine piece or whatever—but how many of those people actually sit down and do it? The irony was that I’d already gotten through the hardest part and now I wanted to give up. It’s like quitting a marathon in mile 25 because your shoulder hurts.

Good articles

Some good articles about writing/publishing that I recently came across:

This one talks about the fact that publishing a hit book is still a mystery and why. I love the line about it being a bad idea to leave business decisions up to people who go into their line of work (publishing) out of love, not money.

I think Poetmom will especially appreciate this one. It's about the importance of blogging for musical artists (and much of the info is relevant to writers). The lede profile is of a blogger who wrote a song a week for a year (much like PM's poem a day for a month project).