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.”
- “Launching a Book During the Pandemic: Authors on Pivoting, Promoting, and Perspective.” I wish I’d caught this Book Riot piece (by Stacey Megally) before the book-promo webinar I ran this week. (HT @JennyBhatt)
- “Join the Authors Guild Foundation and an array of authors and publishing experts for this FREE series of webinars on the path to publication and the business of writing!”
- You’ll find some craft tips for poets in this Mslexia piece on “How to Win a Poetry Competition.”
- “So You Wrote a Picture Book, Now What?” (by Christine Evans for Writer’s Digest) may just get me moving again (after a long break) on my next picture-book ms, even while I’m still trying to place my first one.
- And, as per usual, you’ll find a fresh set of Jewish-lit links posted over on My Machberet. Less typically, this batch includes a piece of my own: I knew that I wanted to write about a new picture-book as soon as I read an advance copy. I just didn’t expect that Sally Rooney would provide the “peg.”
Wishing everyone a good weekend!
Oh my dear lady, Erika Dreifus, oh my poetic heart! Does a poet really want to trade in such movements as “pivoting and promoting”? Yes, a terpsichorean twist or two, but we blush to promote what we’ve created by standing or sitting so long. And winning competitions by groveling to the judges? They are a surly and incorrigible lot! And who knows, finally? These are just two of the conundrums attached to the art of poetry. To market, to market, to sell a fat pig, I say. All poets go to the farmers’ market and declaim by heart their favorite poems, which must be at least as good as rotten tomatoes.