Quote of the Week

I will say that writing the trilogy has presented me with a lot of challenges in that you’re trying to write one story and maintain a story arch over three books. I can barely organize my sock drawer, and I think you can tell from talking to me that I can barely organize my thoughts. I never outline anything, and I never plan anything in advance, I always jokingly say that for me, writing is like standing at the open mouth of the plane, holding on to the ripcord, looking down and saying this could all end badly, or it […]

We dread this question because we know that readers are hoping we will relate some sort of mystical epiphany that we attained after years of meditation, or at the very least, an encounter with an elderly uncle who shared family secrets on his deathbed before swearing us to secrecy. And we writers will often oblige and invent a crowd-pleasing moment of revelation, or worse yet, refuse to answer by invoking the vow of silence we made to our uncle of blessed (and imaginary) memory. Mysteries in Plain Sight

A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2005 is “truthiness,” defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts. Honestly, “truthiness” is selected the word of 2005

In horse-racing terms, the book trade is a bizarre inverted handicap in which the runners with pedigree and form gain all the advantages, while the outsiders have extra weights heaped on their backs. The year of publishing safely – John Dugdale on the importance of discounts, TV and the celebrity author

The OED still takes quotations from published material which has been specifically marketed at women, including the well-known women’s fashion and ‘lifestyle’ magazines, which represent a valuable source for popular culture and modern life in general. Elle, for instance, has supplied quotations used as examples for approximately sixty headwords, such as: chic, dramedy, high-street, bootylicious, Hinglish, indie, majorly, Medusa-like, omega-6, party spirit, texting, and try-hard. Although Elle has as yet provided us with no first quotations, Vogue has thirty-five, including: beautiful people, blusher, cellulite, launderette, low-impact [aerobics], miniskirt, peep-toe, talc [=talcum powder], and upswept [hair]. The contribution of women to

A prediction. After today’s blogging hype fades for a tried-and-true historical reason – serious readers have never paid more than a pittance for ephemera – the Internet’s identification with blogging will give way to exploitation of its truly novel capacity: limitless cheap space for substantive, long-form writing. That development will only expand as the last print generation that hates to read off screens dies off. ‘New Journalists’: They gave readers more, not less

Writing is not an inherently interesting profession. It’s very boring to watch. Writers do not dress well, and they frequently mumble. Periodically, a writer goes into rehab or opens an antique store; it’s not exactly cinematic. It’s not like freeing the virtuous farmers from the yoke of oppression by wearing a mask and engaging in swordplay. It’s the life of the mind. It’s paint drying. Jon Carroll

Probably I did when I started. But then ultimately you go into your office every day and you do your job and you don’t think a whole lot about that. Except to the extent that it’s—except for the “wow” factor, where you say, Wow, I work with Roger Angell whose mother was the first fiction editor of the magazine and whose stepfather was E. B. White, and he comes to the fiction meetings and argues with me about stories every day. So you have that factor. Or, Wow, I grew up reading Don DeLillo and now I’m arguing with him

The impact of a negative review is more powerful in decreasing book sales than a positive review is in increasing sales. The authors attribute this to the credibility consumers place on the reviews. For example, multiple glowing reviews for a book may be perceived as hype generated by an author or publisher. Yale School of Management Word of Mouth Study Finds Customer Reviews at Amazon, BN.com Influence Book Sales

“English writers for the most part try to follow Orwell’s dictum that prose should be a pane of clear glass through which you look,” he [John Banville] said. “But Irish writers think of prose style as a distorting lens. We love that ambiguity; we love that a word can have three or four meanings at the same time.” His Love of Words Rivals His Contempt for Critics