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.”
- If, like me, you’ve struggled mightily with crafting story endings, you’ll want to take a look at Jenny Shank’s craft essay “How to Write an Ending” (Catapult).
- And from Jacqui Banaszynski (Nieman Storyboard): another craft-focused nugget, this time focusing on the use of sensory detail (something else I’ve struggled with) through a close reading of text from Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Brain.
- In which Jane Friedman responds to this week’s New York Times article titled “Millions of Followers? For Book Sales, ‘It’s Unreliable'”: “Is it really unreliable? Or is it publishers falling asleep at the wheel? Or is it the case of not-so-great books being published and no one wanting them?”
- “50 Flash Markets” curated by Eric Scott Tryon (not all are fee-free, and not all are paying, so be forewarned about that).
- And there are some real goodies in the latest batch of Jewish-lit links over on the My Machberet blog.
Enjoy your weekend!
