One last thing I must say about this book. For a writer of Moore’s talent, ”Fat Girl” has been published to appear second-rate. Its sloppy editing and uninteresting jacket design look like something you would pawn off on a fat girl, no matter what her age. Moore and her audience deserve better. ‘Fat Girl’: Big
“I try not to play favorites with words because they get their feelings hurt.” [Erin McKean] In Land of Lexicons, Having the Last Word
MIRAMAXERS — or what’s left of them — are fuming. “We have no idea what’s going on,” said one staffer in the book department. “We had no idea Jonathan Burnham was leaving or that Harvey and Bob [Weinstein] wanted to start another book company until we read it in The Post. No one at the company is bothering to tell anyone what’s going on. And Hyperion hasn’t contacted any of us or the authors.” Some staffers aren’t waiting to be pushed out. Dina Wise, head of special events, left to form her own company, Wise & Co., while publicity honcho
“Spamalot” fans who signed up for a newsletter on the Broadway musical’s official Web site may end up getting, well, spammed a lot. “Movin’ Out” devotees may have the same problem. A security glitch – now fixed – exposed the names and postal and e-mail addresses of more than 31,000 people to savvy computer users. That we could not resist should come as no surprise to anyone. What to Expect of ‘Spamalot’? A Lot of Spam
You only want to work on the stuff you’re not supposed to be working on. That’s how it always is. I’ll always be working on five things at once, usually with those documents open at the same time because if I get stuck somewhere I’ll jump over to something else. That’s how my head has always worked. I don’t know if it’s ’cause I watched too much TV as a kid or what. It really could be that. The believer: Dave Eggers talks about production by procrastination, how understanding book-selling can empower a writer, and what it’s like to be
As it were, the fine writer Stephanie Hammer — she of the 3rd place finish below — is writer-in-residence at Pitzer and invited me to come speak to her beginning creative writing course, which was using Fake Liar Cheat as a text (presumably a text on how to forget the middle act of a novel). “Before you talk,” she said, “they’re going to take a short quiz on the work.” . . . She handed me a copy of the quiz — 10 questions, including a few two-parters — and what I realized is that, at best, I knew 7
A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. Unfortunately for us, there are a lot of big words in the article, so this is the best we can do. It’s because our adoration of random facts and paragraphs has destroyed our ability to suffer sustained reading of complex texts (also, we only like books with pictures). Revenge of the Blog People! (Via Publisher’s Lunch)
Not that I don’t reread books. I’m sure all serious readers do, and for a variety of reasons: the pleasure of recognition, to see how the book has changed over the years (for they do, you know: they grow new limbs up there on the shelf), revisiting an oasis (sometimes it turns out to be a mirage) of order, because it’s near our chair and we’re too lazy to get up and fetch another. The many sides of ‘The Stranger’
Though we remain convinced that Dan Wickett doesn’t sleep, we will not dwell on that at this moment. He’s posted the second in his series of interviews with literary journals. Great, great reading all around. And great quote for us: Well, I don’t know that you’d call it “love,” but it’s a long way from anything resembling cash. (Barry Barry Silesky – Another Chicago Magazine) Interview with LitJournals Another Chicago Magazine
In the end, the only useful lesson was a simple one: As a writer, I have to accept the lack of control. Publishing a book is like having a child. You can do everything right — feed him, clothe him, show him Baby Kierkegaard videos — but a bully at kindergarten can still make him eat clumps of dirt. You have to come to terms with that. And you have to appreciate that your child is able to run around the playground at all, and is even having fun on the jungle gym when not being pummeled. Oh, and you
