Posts Tagged‘Fiction’
Quotation of the Week: Charles Johnson
The following snippet appeared on Twitter last Saturday as a live-tweet from the Modern Language Association’s 2012 convention in Seattle. It comes from a session that was billed as “A Creative Conversation with Charles Johnson,” with Linda F. Selzer presiding.
Selzer: “You’ve written four novels.”
Johnson: “I’ve written ten novels. Published four.”
Source: @Brent_Newsom
(Johnson, let us remember, has won the National Book Award for fiction, NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, and many other honors.)
Monday Markets/Jobs/Opportunities for Writers
Friday Find: Free Books!
As hard as it may be to believe, my short-story collection, Quiet Americans, is almost one year old! Its official pub date was January 19, 2011.
To celebrate this milestone, I’m offering three lucky people free copies of the book. If you’re in the U.S., you can have a signed print copy. If you’re outside the U.S., I can offer you a Kindle copy. (If you’re in the U.S. and prefer a Kindle copy, you can opt for that instead of the print version. It will be totally up to you. And if your name is chosen and you already own a copy and would prefer to gift one instead, we can do that, too.)
All you have to do is follow me on Twitter OR “like” my Facebook page.
That’s it. Simple.
Prizewinners will be chosen randomly and announced on January 19, 2012. Of course, if you follow me on Twitter AND like my Facebook page, you will improve your chances of winning.
I’d love it if you’d spread the word. (Even if that decreases your own chances, you’ll earn karmic points.)
Thank you so much. Have a great weekend, and see you back here on Monday!
UPDATED: To avoid confusion, let me explain that there will be a total of 3 winners. I wish I could spare up to six print copies right now, but I just can’t!
Quotation of the Week: Scott Nadelson
Q: “What advice would you give your younger self?”
“I think it would be the same advice I give myself now, whenever I feel frustrated or lost, whenever I worry that I’ll never write another decent book or story or sentence: Don’t take yourself too seriously.
I once had a teacher who told me a story about a conversation he had with Grace Paley. He was working with her while at Stanford, complaining to her about how badly the writing was going, how tortured he was by the process. And she turned to him and said, ‘You don’t have to do it, you know. No one’s sitting around waiting for your next story.’
It may be devastating to realize that no one but you is going to care if you stop writing. But it’s also wonderfully freeing. All pressures and expectations drop away. You don’t have to worry about shaping the future of literature or saving the world. You can just put one word after another for the simple pleasure of making something out of nothing.”
Source: Interview with Scott Nadelson, Fiction Writers Review