Quotation of the Week: Roger Ebert
“When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thoughts fall aside and it is all just there. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.”
–Roger Ebert
Source: “Roger Ebert on Writing: !5 Reflections from Life Itself,” TheAtlantic.com. For more about Ebert’s new memoir, see Harvey Freedenberg’s review for Bookreporter.
Monday Morning Markets/Jobs/Opportunities for Writers
(NB: There are so many college teaching opportunities this week that I’ve listed them after the break. Please click through to find them. Thanks!)
- Interesting residency opportunity (apparently the first of many) in Paris, from VINGT Paris magazine. No application fee. Deadline: October 19, 2011, for a residency that must take place November 20-December 20. (via @parisimperfect)
- From The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts: “We are currently ONLY open for compressed poetry (no prose poems at this time), and the reading period ends on October 31, 2011. Also, please limit your submission to a SINGLE POEM per reading period.” Pays: $50. (via CRWROPPS-B)
- Attention, North Carolinians! The deadline for submissions to the 2011 NC State Short Story Contests is October 17. “The contest is open to NC residents (including out-of-state students enrolled in a NC university). However, you may not be 1) an already published author, or 2) a tenure-track faculty member in the UNC system.” Writers may enter in one of both of the categories: the JAMES HURST Prize for Fiction, with a purse of $500 for longer stories no more than 20 pages or 5000 words/the NCSU SHORTER FICTION PRIZE, $250 for short-shorts no more than 5 pages or 1200 words. No entry fees. This year’s judge: Ron Rash.
- Paid internship opportunity with the Nature Publishing Group (New York). Application deadline: October 15, 2011.
- The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is looking for “a talented editor and writer to join our creative team in producing KnowLA, the Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture (www.knowla.org), and Louisiana Cultural Vistas, an award-winning quarterly arts and culture magazine in print for 22 years”; Saint Louis Art Museum seeks a Writer/Editor; and One Day, the alumni magazine for Teach for America (New York) invites applications for an Associate Editor position.
Friday Find: CLMP Audio Archive
Since I’m home on medical leave these days, I actually have more time than usual to listen to podcasts. And I’m happy to have discovered this audio archive from the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP), which features recordings from past panels and sessions of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and the Literary Writers Conference (LWC).
You’ll find here an impressive range of topics. I’ve just dipped into the recording of “Marketing Your Book Online: Virtual Touring, Social Media, and Promotion in the Digital Age,” but I suspect that several others–“Rejection, Revision, Resubmission” and “So You’ve Made an eBook–Now What,” just for starters–are not too distant in my listening future.
Enjoy the weekend, and see you back here next week.
Thursday Work-in-Progress: Starting a New Short Story
It has taken me a couple of months, but I think that I’m finally ready to reframe these Thursday blog posts. Instead of sharing tidbits from the post-publication phase of my story collection, Quiet Americans, I’m going to focus on new work-in-progress: fiction, poetry, book reviews, essays, and freelance assignments. Assignments, drafts, revisions, submissions, applications, and so forth. The possibilities are, as they say, limitless.
I’m still home on medical leave this week, but I’ve had somewhat more energy, and I have been able to spend some decent chunks of time reading text longer than a magazine article and writing text longer than a tweet. My main accomplishment is a completed first draft of a new short story.
This isn’t just any short story. This is my first commissioned short story, and the commission seems to have resulted from the “commissioner” having read Quiet Americans. I don’t want to say too much about the project, because I am superstitious. Until the story is out there for you to enjoy, I don’t want to give too many details.
But I will say something about the process of writing this draft. (more…)