Two Twists on New Year’s Resolutions for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Not all writing-related resolutions must involve waking up an hour earlier to draft a few hundred words, or sending out a certain number of submissions each month. Just consider these two approaches:

The Book Publicity Blog has posted a set of (mainly) publicity-related resolutions you might want to adopt, especially if you have a new/forthcoming book. For example: “Set up a Google Alert for your book (or all your books if you’re a book publicist).” And “Make sure an author’s web presence is established early, as in, by the time galleys are sent to the media (typically four-six months before a book goes on sale).”

And since there’s a considerable amount of business e-mail in most practicing writers’ lives–requesting guidelines, pitching article ideas, submitting stories or essays or poems, corresponding about assignments, dealing with invoices and payment, etc.–we can surely benefit from a refresher course on how to handle e-mail communications via “10 Business E-Mail Etiquette New Year’s Resolutions.” Truly excellent material there.

The Wednesday Web Browser: Conference Call, Promotion via Book Groups, and Jayne Anne Phillips’s New Novel

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Our friend from Fernham, Anne, who is planning a June conference in New York City, is in search of creative writers influenced by Virginia Woolf. Interested? Click here for more information.
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The indefatigable Josh Henkin is back with book group-based book promotion ideas, this time featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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When La Kakutani touts, I listen. Based on this review, Jayne Anne Phillips’s new novel, Lark and Termite, goes to the top of my tbr list.

Revision Time

by Erika Dreifus on
4

The past couple of days–for reasons I’m not quite ready to broadcast on the blog–have been among the most atypical and challenging days of my life. So the good news I received yesterday from the editors of a journal I’m going to keep unnamed for the moment was especially well-timed. Basically, these editors had solicited a short story from me, and were coming back with a great deal of enthusiasm–along with several suggestions for improvement.

Now, this is a story that has already been published in the UK (so it would technically be “new” in a North American publication). It has received honors in a number of contests. A number of agents and editors seem impressed by it. It is, arguably, one of the two or three best stories I’ve written.

It’s a story I began writing about six years ago and published back in 2005. It’s a story I’ve further revised per some agent suggestions. And it’s the story that opens my collection, which has already “gone out” time after time after time.

So you might think that at this late date, I’d be closed to further revisions. You’d be wrong.

On the contrary, I am really excited about the ideas these editors have shared with me. Of course, I don’t think it hurts that their e-mail began and ended with major compliments for the story and expressed clear enthusiasm for and interest in publishing it. As I told them in my response message, this story means a lot to me, and their extremely thoughtful, sensible, and specific suggestions make me grateful.

These revisions may not be easy, and in the end I may not be able to complete all of them to everyone’s satisfaction. But I’m eager to try.

An Unexpected Farewell

by Erika Dreifus on
6

A week ago my family lost a beloved friend, who also happened to be our Senior Rabbi Emeritus. I mentioned this still-shocking loss on my other blog a few days ago. But I hadn’t yet figured out how I’d write about it here.

Yesterday, the New Jersey Jewish News published an article about Rabbi Barry H. Greene. And I thought I’d share it with all of you.

Simply on the writing front, “Barry,” as I was privileged to call him, was a staunch champion of all my work. Most recently, he complimented this review, and, knowing my family as he did, e-mailed his appreciation for this blog post.

He also always did his best to “connect” me whenever he could. The NJJN piece includes a sidebar about his work on the newspaper’s Board of Trustees; I am quite sure that it was my telling an editor (at his urging), that Barry had referred me that facilitated my writing a number of book reviews for the paper in the 1990s.

The most significant writing I’ve done this past week is the text of my family’s public tribute to him. I’ll leave this post with those words, which appeared in The New York Times on Monday.

GREENE–Rabbi Barry H. One summer Saturday 30 years ago, Rabbi Greene welcomed us to our first service at Temple B’nai Jeshurun. On that morning we could not yet realize how much we would come to love and depend on him. Over the years, he has enriched our lives in countless ways with his wise and loving guidance and friendship. We will miss him always. The Dreifus Family