Now, it could be that I’m overreacting. Maybe the fact that two intelligent and capable writers — in a major book, on an important topic, published by one of the country’s top presses — end up sounding like Alanis Morrissette is not as worrisome as it seems. Isn’t It Ironic?
One needs to be fairly neurotic to copyedit—you have to be willing to spend time worrying about whether something’s a restrictive participle or a nonrestrictive one, and you actually have to care. Relatedly, it has to make a difference to you whether the name of the song is “I Want to Hold You Hand†or “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.†Enough About Me #8: In Which the Author Hands in His Copyedited Manuscript and Pays Tribute to the Most Unheralded Job in Publishing
Writers may tell you that they don’t care about reviews, but they do. Every artist does. We all remember our truly awful reviews. We remember who wrote them. And we never, ever forgive or forget. Tess Gerritsen Blog – March 21, 2005 Entry
The maxibooks are all very self-conscious about being just that: books. With footnotes or typography or a steady stream of literary references and allusions, they’re always reminding you that what you’re holding in your hand is an artifact, something made up. The Souped-Up, Knock-Out, Total Fiction Experience
“I wanted to be a writer since before I knew how to read, but my parents are immigrants and they believed that pursuing such an impractical profession would lead to a life of grief,” she [Lan Samantha Chang] said with a laugh, adding that her parents years ago had read about Iowa in a Chinese newspaper and admired it as a haven for writers. Chang to head Iowa writers program
“John Wesley Harding is a great name to play music under,” he says, “but it really has no relevance to the world of ‘Misfortune.’” It would be, he says, laughing, “like publishing ‘Vanity Fair’ under the name Wild Bill Hickok.” Talking With Wesley Stace, Singer-Songwriter Turned Historical Novelist
“Every single time, it’s an impossible job,” Mr. Potts said of poems celebrating royal weddings. “One’s not entirely clear why anyone bothers to do it.” A Poet Laureate’s Royal Call: Dreamy Ode to Ridiculed Love
My publisher forwarded this amusing thing from Gawker.com the other day — it was reporting on the review of my book in the New York Times Book Review. It really was quite revealing. It was written by a young woman who said she was a recent graduate of Yale. And she said that as she was reading that long, three-page review by Clive James, her eyes glazed over because it was about poetry. And I thought, Oh, my God — if this isn’t a testament to what’s gone wrong in the Ivy League! Warrior for the word: Camille Paglia slams
t would be one thing if the people charged with writing the insta-book knock-off publishing projects about the collapse of the Brad and Jennifer marriage were Sydney Carton types, aging boozers with rotted hearts heroically turning one last disgusting buck with a foot already in the grave. But the authors of this year’s Brad and Jen: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Golden Couple ($7, Wenner) are a pair of brainless little girls of a type to make one pray for the speedy return of Stalin to power. The two US Weekly “senior writers” wrote their Brad-and-Jen book in a
. . .it’s not enough to decide to write the history of package tourism, say, have your agent send a quick note to publishers and then watch the offers roll in. You have to produce an extensive proposal that not only conveys your enthusiasm for the project, but second guesses a whole range of complex questions a publisher may have about your idea. Pre-text: Original, funny, thrilling. And that’s just the proposal
