Thursday’s Post-Publication Post: Another Item Crossed Off My To-Do List

by Erika Dreifus on
6

Remember that to-do list from the beginning of the summer? I am delighted to report that I can now cross off that list the very first item under the category of “quality of writing life.”

That’s right. Last Friday, armed with research and primed with questions, I set out for my local Apple store. (I’ve never purchased a non-Mac computer, and I’m not about to change that habit now.)

So I’m typing this blog post from my lovely, light new laptop: a MacBook Air. Even better, I’m no longer chained to my home desk, because I also purchased, at long last, an AirPort Express router. And, with a little help from some kindly tech folks on the phone, I managed to create a working wireless network of my own!

There’s a learning curve, of course. I’m still getting used to the “Pages” word processing program that the salesman encouraged me to try–for a mere $20–instead of plunking down several multiples of that some for an updated Microsoft Office. But these are productive lessons. And I love my new Mac!

How are your lists doing? Please feel free to share your updates and progress!

The Wednesday Web Browser

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
  • On The Quivering Pen, David Abrams presents Katharine Weber’s account of her first “rejection of rejection,” which also happened to lead to her first fiction in print—in The New Yorker.
  • The Writer magazine knows that you may have depended on Borders to buy your copies of the magazine. And the editors don’t want to lose you.
  • You don’t need to be a print subscriber, but you do need to register with the Writermag.com website to read what four current/recent writing students–two in traditional MFA programs, one in a low-res program, and one in PhD program–have to say about their experiences (and what they wished they’d known ahead of time).
  • Over on The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s site, Alan Jacobs argues: “We Can’t Teach Students to Love Reading.”
  • But here’s one way that we may be able to kindle a love for reading in the next generation. (Kindle. Get it?)
  • If your writing practice includes the teaching of college writing, you may want to check out this Q&A with the authors of The College Writing Toolkit: Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing.
  • The 2011 Atlantic Fiction Issue is on newsstands now. And it’s online. There are several wonderful stories in this issue, including Ariel Dorfman’s “The Last Copy,” Sarah Turcotte’s “Scars,” Jerome Charyn’s “Little Sister,” and Elizabeth McKenzie’s “Someone I’d Like You to Meet.” (I admire Austin Bunn’s “How to Win an Unwinnable War,” especially for its glance back at the last years of the Cold War, too. But having grown up in New Jersey with plenty of friends attending the Governor’s School as rising high school seniors, I was perhaps unreasonably distracted by the idea of seventh-grade Governor’s School students.)

    • Monday Morning Markets/Jobs/Opportunities

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
    • First things first: The Practicing Writer newsletter alert went out to subscribers on Friday, so subscribers have had all weekend to peruse the many no-fee competitions and paying submission calls listed there. You can catch up online today.
    • “Crab Orchard Review is seeking work for our Summer/Fall 2012 issue focusing on writing exploring the people, places, history, and changes shaping the states (and *District of Columbia) in the U.S. that make up the northern mid-Atlantic and Northeast (*Maryland, *Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) and the northern Midwest east of the Mississippi River (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and *Minnesota). *We know we’re stretching boundaries and regions with the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, and Minnesota, but we would like to see what those places bring to this exploration. We’ll head a little farther west next time around.” Note: “All submissions should be original, unpublished poetry, fiction, or literary nonfiction in English or unpublished translations in English (we do run bilingual, facing-page translations whenever possible). Please query before submitting any interview.” Submission window opens August 17 and ends November 5. Pays: “$25 (US) per magazine page ($50 minimum for poetry; $100 minimum for prose) and two copies of the issue.”
    • “The Review of English Studies (RES) is pleased to continue the sponsorship of the RES Essay Prize, launched in 1999. The aim of The RES Essay Prize is to encourage fine scholarship amongst postgraduate research students in Britain and abroad….The RES Essay Prize is open to anyone currently studying for a higher degree, in Britain or abroad, or to anyone who completed such a degree no earlier than October 2008, except employees of Oxford University Press and other persons connected to Oxford University Press.” Essays “can be on any topic or period of English literature or the English language,” in keeping with The Review of English Studies mission statement. Prize includes a cash award of GBP 250, publication of the winning essay, a subscription to *RES*, and books from Oxford University Press (worth GBP 250). Deadline: September 30, 2011. No entry fee.
    • The Harvard Library (Mass.) is looking for a Director of Communications, the University at Buffalo (N.Y.) seeks a Staff Writer/Editor for its School of Public Health & Health Professions, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City is advertising for a Senior Writer.

    Friday Find: Vintage Essay on “Writing What You Know”

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    I never knew John Gardner, yet I’m certain he would have hated the story I submitted to my first fiction workshop. In The Art of Fiction, Gardner denounced the tendency to transcribe personal memory onto the page; he understood it was precisely that practice that many people, especially beginning writers, equated with the famous dictum to “write what you know.” I had fallen into that trap myself. That first workshop submission proved it. I had not yet read Gardner. I did not appreciate that “Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination, nothing is quicker to turn on the psyche’s censoring devices and distortion systems, than trying to write truthfully and interestingly about own’s own home town, one’s Episcopalian mother, one’s crippled younger sister.”

    So I wrote about my own home town.

    So begins “Pushing the Limits of ‘Writing What You Know,'” an essay that I wrote many years ago.  Published originally in The Willamette Writer, it’s now available on ErikaDreifus.com, and I invite you to read the rest online.

    Enjoy the weekend, and see you back here on Monday!