Friday Find: "How to Create a Simple Writer Blog"

For those of you who have not yet created a blog, today’s your lucky day! Peta Jinnath Andersen provides some truly excellent tips on getting one started. I wish I’d seen a post like this before I started mine!

Which raises a question I’ve considered asking here before: Have any of you transferred a blog from Blogger to WordPress, and if so, what advice do you have?

Thanks, and enjoy the weekend. See you back here on Monday. (Can’t believe it will be March!)

Book Reviewing is NOT the Same as Sitting on the Couch Watching Bad TV

Earlier this week, Jason Boog reported on Arianna Huffington’s keynote speech at the “Tools of Change” conference. As I read the summary, I thought: Hey, Arianna! I’m with you! Especially when I read: “Huffington also explored the idea behind The Huffington Post books section, rejecting ‘this magical pub date’– the traditional time-period for scheduling book reviews and running book tours. ‘Forget about it–the idea that you have three weeks between pub date and oblivion. It doesn’t have to be like that,’ she said, earning a smattering of applause.” (A smattering of applause? I should think she would have received a standing ovation, at least from the writers and publishing professionals in the room.)

Anyway, as I say, I was with her–until I read this:

“Finally, she addressed the perennial criticism that many writers on the site don’t get paid. ‘Self expression is the new entertainment,’ she explained. ‘We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching bad TV. Nobody ever asked, ‘Why are they doing that for free?’ We need to celebrate that moment rather than question it.'”

(Spoken like someone who might have both a huge divorce settlement AND a slew of advertisers and may not exactly depend on income generated by her own writing to pay her bills.)

Now, it may surprise some of you to learn that I’m just as capable of sitting on the couch for seven hours (when I have seven hours to spare) watching bad TV as the next person. (While I’m in confession mode, I may as well tell you that last weekend my sister and I went to see Kathy Griffin perform here New York. She–Kathy Griffin– was hilarious. There. By the way, if you don’t watch television, don’t bother going to see Kathy Griffin. Whenever she’s not imitating her mother, she’s talking about various reality shows and “characters. Or Anderson Cooper. Or Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.)

But I digress.

When I write, the “entertainment” factor differs significantly from what results when I stare at my TV. Any “entertainment” that comes from reviewing, for instance, is pure pleasure from the work, satisfaction from reading a book I (hopefully) want to tell others about (for that matter, reading it at least twice), thinking about that book, rechecking everything from the list price to the page count, and writing and crafting a text that will make sense and perhaps even resonate with readers. It’s work. It may be absorbing, self-expressive, and even entertaining work. But even if we choose not to be paid for it–as we might when writing for a particular cause/organization–it’s still work.

It’s not sitting on a couch watching bad TV.

What Does "Submission-Ready" Mean to You?

“Working on a story. Am determined to get it submission-ready!”

So read a post I “tweeted” on Monday. Lo and behold, somebody actually read what I wrote. And she wrote, in turn:

“@erikadreifus what does submission-ready mean to you?”

What an excellent question. Not just for me, but for all of us practicing writers.

My response on Twitter basically said that I couldn’t possibly address the question in 140 characters. I promised to do so here, instead.

So here’s what I think “submission-ready” means to me: I think it means that I’ve brought the work in question to a point where I can’t envision further edits/changes/improvements. At least, not imminently. And I believe that an editor/agent/publisher will read past the first few lines/pages and take the work seriously.

Now, it does happen that I submit a story or essay or poem (or novel or short story collection), receive a series of rejections (the best ones provide some constructive comments/feedback), and am then prompted to revisit the work. I might ask others who haven’t yet shared their time and insights to read and comment, too. Although I won’t necessarily withdraw the work from any journal/contest/agent/publisher where it might still be waiting to be read/decided on, I’ll refrain from submitting it anywhere else until I’ve had time to consider changes and, more often than not, revise further. In this sense, “submission-ready” is not a constant. It evolves. Because, unfortunately, what I might consider initially “submission-ready” may not necessarily be “acceptance-ready”! In fact, the story that sparked my tweet is one I believed “submission-ready” quite awhile ago, but am revising once again.

I’m eager to hear from others on this. What does “submission-ready” mean to you?