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The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
  • As if we needed more reason to love Ann Patchett.
  • Among the gems in the latest Poets & Writers magazine is a profile of novelist Julie Otsuka. Unfortunately, that article is not online, but I think that Alida Becker’s review of Otsuka’s new book in The New York Times Book Review makes an equally compelling case for adding Otsuka’s work to one’s TBR list.
  • The ever brilliant Nina Badzin, on the art & science of Twitter.
  • New to submitting your work to literary magazines? Check out these tips on drafting cover letters.
  • This wonderful interview (within Shenandoah‘s first online issue) covers so much literary territory, including Rebecca Makkai’s journey from undergraduate assistant at the journal to acclaimed fiction writer. (See also our own interview with this author!)
  • My latest book review is of Sam Savage’s novel, Glass (Coffee House Press). I’m a writer who enjoys reading books about writers and writing, so this one appealed to me as soon as I read its description. Check out my review on The Writer‘s website (full text available to all registered site users, and site registration is free!).

    • The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2
  • The fact that I live in NYC by no means makes me an expert on literary life here. So I’m delighted to see the latest addition to the Poets & Writers City Guides: New York City!
  • I’ve just finished reading an advance reading copy (provided by Coffee House Press) of Ben Lerner’s novel, Leaving the Atocha Station. Since I have no idea when I’ll be able to offer cogent commentary of my own on this most intriguing work, I’ll point you to David Shields’s contribution for the Los Angeles Review of Books in the meantime. (But stay tuned: I do have a review of another Coffee House book in the works.)
  • Fadra Nally discusses “How to Get Unfollowed on Twitter.”
  • Another social-media tidbit: In “When Students Friend Me,” Cathy Day offers a sample text that other teachers might adapt to explain their social-media policies on syllabi.
  • I’ve read a number of commentaries sparked by the recent release of the film version of Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. Nothing is quite like Roxane Gay’s essay for The Rumpus.
  • Kelly James-Enger suggests “5 Ways to Take Your Freelance Career Seriously.”
  • Remember my explanation re: how I got to know author Rebecca Makkai? Here’s a lovely essay that Rebecca has written about the online community where we “met.”

    • Friday Find: Free eBooks for Writers

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    If you’re looking for something to read this weekend, you may want to pick up a book (or four, or nine) at a special Back to School Sale. As I mentioned on Twitter earlier in the week, WritersDigest.com has announced the free availability of a set of eBooks. Titles include Grammatically Correct, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing, I’m an English Major—Now What?, and Robert’s Rules of Writing. Offer lasts until August 22.

    Enjoy, and have a great weekend. See you back here on Monday!

    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.)

    • 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!