Finds for Writers
Most Fridays the Practicing Writing blog shares writing and publishing resources, news, and reflections to peruse over the weekend. But it’s been an excruciating week for so many of us. And frankly, I’ve paid next-to-no attention to garden-variety news from the writing and publishing spheres.
On Wednesday, however, I received an email from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based global nonprofit organization that I’ve admired for many years. The email introduced a “mini-lesson” titled “Processing Attacks in Israel and the Outbreak of War in the Region.”
The resource isn’t perfect. (What resource is?) But one of its segments impressed me as something that, though intended for educators and students, could be clarifying for writers as well, in our work and in the rest of our lives. It’s a section titled “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
- “Can we pause and pay tribute to the older writers still producing work into their 80s and even their 90s?” Yes, Tom Beer, we can—thank you for prompting us to do so (Kirkus).
- “15 Ways Authors Support Each Other on Social Media” (Leila Hirschfield for BookBub; a few of the suggestions are BookBub-specific, but most are widely applicable).
- Noted by @JaneFriedman: “This year’s Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, has sold about 3,000 print copies in the US market. His latest novel does not have a US publisher (only UK). He writes in English.” (Read more about Gurnah on the Nobel site.)
- Speaking of Jane Friedman: It’s her site that hosts an intriguing post by Sharon Oard Warner suggesting that NaNoWriMo participants adjust their goals—don’t try to write a novel in November; instead, aim to complete a novella.
- If you’ve followed “the discourse” online this week, you’ll likely find one of the items in this week’s Jewish-lit links on the My Machberet blog—a review (by Judith Shulevitz) of a new book about W.G. Sebald—to be particularly timely. (Hint: The headline reads, “W.G. Sebald Ransacked Jewish Lives for His Fictions.” I am not passing any judgments here—I care too much about my old literary community in Boston for that. I’m merely noting that the question of how fiction writers make use of others’ experiences is one that transcends any single instance.)
Have a great weekend.
