Friday Find: The Secrets to Publishing Success

by Erika Dreifus on
4

That post title sure grabbed your attention, didn’t it?

Well, Jane Friedman, publisher and editorial director of the Writer’s Digest brand at F+W Media, has compiled a set of extremely helpful posts from her There Are No Rules blog (which itself has appeared on our list of frequently checked blogs and links for quite some time). Subtitled “Jane’s 2009 Tough Love Guide,” “The Secrets to Publishing Success” covers a lot: editing and revising, querying/submitting, audience development/platform building, online audience building, indie (self) publishing, and “big picture” ideas. You’re bound to find some information that you can use in your writing practice.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Genre Confusion: Help Wanted!

by Erika Dreifus on
16

In many ways, I am not at all suited to be a fiction writer. I am not one of those lucky souls who is “taken over” by a character who demands to have a story written. I am not someone to whom plot comes naturally. My work is often idea- or circumstance-driven, which, I’ve (finally?) begun to realize, often makes it more suited to essays or poems. Or prose poems. Maybe.

Without getting far more bogged down in details about two new pieces I’ve been struggling with, I think that each one may ultimately find its true destiny as a prose poem. But I’m not sure. Yet.

Here’s where you come in. I’d be very grateful for comments and advice from my fellow practicing writers on these questions:

1) How do you “know” the form a given work of yours should take?

2) Please recommend some online (or offline) guides to prose poetry that you’ve found useful in mastering the form. What I’m really seeking with this question are thoughtful craft lessons and background materials.

3) Can you recommend (again, online or offline) favorite prose poems, for inspiration and/or education? Do feel free to “self-nominate”!

Thank you in advance!

"For Services Rendered": A Story and Its History

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

If you’ve visited my other blog lately (it’s called My Machberet, and it focuses on matters of more specifically Jewish cultural and literary interest), you’ve likely noticed my multi-part interview with Kelly Hartog, the founding editor of Scribblers on the Roof, an exciting new online forum for Jewish fiction and poetry.

Scribblers on the Roof does not currently pay its contributors, but it does accept reprints, and it’s there that you can now read my short story, “For Services Rendered,” which, in various incarnations, has also appeared in Solander: The Magazine of the Historical Novel Society and J Journal: New Writing on Justice. It’s a story that means a lot to me, and I am grateful to Kelly for publishing as well my guest post explaining why.

Friday Find: Creating Van Gogh

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Creating Van Gogh is a new blog from John Vanderslice, chronicling Vanderslice’s progress as he writes an historical novel featuring Vincent Van Gogh. I think it will particularly interest those of us who give a lot of thought to the use of “real” people in historical fiction. (Side note: The addition of Creating Van Gogh to the links at left signals the first [to my knowledge] set of husband-and-wife featured links here at Practicing Writing: Creating Van Gogh is married to Wordamour!)

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

The Thursday Web Browser

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

I know–Wednesday is the day for the Web Browser–but there is so much to share that I’m taking the liberty of making the regular “column” a two-day event this week:

While nixing cookie service at faculty meetings (or perhaps because of this cost-cutting measure), Harvard manages to purchase the archive of John Updike.
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Intriguing article about the day job/writing dilemma(s). (via Galleycat)
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The first-ever Compleat Biographer conference has been scheduled for May 2010 in Boston, and “biographers who are willing to put on a workshop, chair a panel discussion, or make a presentation” are in demand. (NB: According to The Biographer’s Craft, the conference date will be May 15, rather than the May 23 I just saw on the conference Web site.)
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And in case you’ve been offline for the last day and a half: this year’s Man Booker award has gone to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall.