September 2011
47 posts
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New Ways To Sell Short Stories
(via alan rinzler “the book deal”)
There’s lots of excitement bubbling about new publishing opportunities for writers of short stories, essays, journalism and other less-than-book-length works.
… [read on]
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The Last Story by Marcus Speh at Atticus Review
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The serious writer always knew there would be a last story but when the time was near, he felt ill-prepared. One day, after settling in his favourite chair by the window but turned away from it, he told a visiting friend: “It’s well arranged that you don’t know which of the many will be your last: your last piss, your last time being touched by...
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Real Parrot — by Susan Tepper
Real Parrot
In a Monte Carlo shop window I spot a parrot. “Look,” I say, “there’s a real one.”
He looks a moment then appears bored. “Yes, so?”
“Well— it’s just that we have all those hall parrots in the wallpaper and now here’s a real one.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m not getting your point”.
What point? It’s only an observation. We are half way through the week and he...
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Mermaids, Sirens & Naiads
When the brightest of the stars rose up, the one which always comes to herald light from early Dawn, the sea-faring ship sailed in close to Ithaca. Now, in that land, Phorcys, the Old Man of the Sea, has his harbour.* Two jutting headlands at its mouth drop off on the seaward side, but on the other, slope down to the cove and keep the place protected from huge waves whipped up by stormy winds...
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Flash Fiction: An Experimental Drug?
«Flash fiction is the epitome of immediate gratification. At no time does it allow the reader to zone out. At no time does it allow for a slow-paced, steady bout of rope-a-dope while painting the reader into a corner and having him hold on for dear, desperate life. Instead, flash stands toe-to-toe with the reader and demands surefire readiness and mental acuity as it unleashes...
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Low Aspirations: New Trend — Writers Who Dont...
…observed by Nancy Jane Moore in her post “Reading And Writing” in Book View Cafe:
What is wanting to write without wanting to read like? It’s imperative that we figure it out, because Giraldi’s right: it’s both crazy and prevalent among budding writers.
Macy Halford in The New Yorker
The pervasiveness of social networking corrodes the ability of words to bestow the...
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THE JOHNNY CASH PROJECT
A LIVING PORTRAIT OF THE MAN IN BLACK
The Johnny Cash Project is a global collective art project, and we would love for you to participate. Through this website, we invite you to share your vision of Johnny Cash, as he lives on in your mind’s eye. Working with a single image as a template, and using a custom drawing tool, you’ll create a unique and personal portrait of Johnny. Your work will...
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The Future Of Books—by Sofie C. Brooks →
«…the overwhelming increase in digital sales has already created new possibilities for reaching readers. Publishers can offer extras such as video and audio commentary with their eBooks, and picture books have been given an exciting and entirely new medium with the rise of the iPad. While there are still those who continue to cling to the beauty of the traditionally printed word,...
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How to Balance Writing, Reading, Being a Human →
photo: der arme poet (the poor poet), by spitzweg,
fwriction:
Writing for Specter Literary Magazine, former fwriction : review contributor Brett Elizabeth Jenkins asks one of the most difficult questions, one I struggle with daily: how do you balance life and writing?
What sucks is that most of us, if we call ourselves writers, don’t get paid for what we love to do. Some of us enjoy...
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Mark Coker's 7 secrets of ebook publishing success →
Photo: the last traditional publisher. See also Mark’s article on Huff Post (Oct 2010) or click image to go straight slideshare presentation.
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Orgrease Crankbait
Orgrease Crankbait: “This reminds me of a male squirrel.”
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Low (Extract)
Grief is paralyzing after a break up. I don’t feel any forward momentum. The sadness is unrelenting and overwhelming. I am living in a black hole. Remember the sheet? The sheet can’t break (the sheet is a metaphor my dear). I am so fat and low and sunk that everything is attracted towards me. I am a pitcher plant. I am an emotional pitcher plant. I will lock you in with guilt and fear and guile....
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Videogames As Literary Experiences by J M Owens →
[link to article]
photo: pong, an arcade video game dinosaur.
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babyjaneis-a-bside:
secret poem
Girl in a...
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Berlin = Cloud City
via huffington post
« Cloud Cities is Tomás Saraceno’s largest solo presentation to date. It features approximately 20 of his balloon models in various sizes. But instead of being able only to look at the installation, visitors can actually enter the two largest bubbles, that sit and float like soap bubbles in the former railway hall of the museum. Via ladders they can access the...
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The Rise Of The Robotic Narrator
Boy: «Look, Freddy, your article on Franzen, ‘Robot Writer’, appeared today!» Bot: “Click.”
via GalleyCat:
The New York Times revealed today that trade publisherHanley Wood and sports journalism site The Big Ten Networkuse Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories.
In all, 20 customers use the software–but Narrative Science would not reveal the...
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ambient sound in works of literature — a lecture...
…In this recording from 2008, Beattie reads from a virtuosic essay-in-progress on the subject of ambient sound in works of literature. Beginning with accounts of poet John Ashbery’s “managed chance” method of composing, the noises of drunken Parrotheads in Key West, and a discussion of clichés “whose repetition deadens language,” Beattie arrives at a luxuriant analysis of technique in the...
Kim Yaged @arthouse Tacheles: World Watching
Kim Yaged | World Watching 16.9-14.10 | SineDie ProjectRoom | Berlin wed - sat | 4 - 8 pm | 4th floor arthouse Tacheles Oranienburger Str. 54-56a | 10117 Berlin
OPENING 16.9 | 7 pm Ukraine, Costa Rica, Tunisia, Palestine, World Watching exposes us to a world that’s simultaneously foreign and familiar, driving home the message we’re more similar than different—people...
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Writers take time to absorb 9/11 impact →
Norman Mailer once advised another author to wait 10 years before writing about the attacks of September 11 because “it will take that long for you to make sense of it.” The estimate by the prominent New York novelist and journalist, who died in 2007, may have been premature. As the world marks a decade since the attacks, literary circles are still waiting for a definitive work on...
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Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. By... →
«When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.»
Jonathan Franzen
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Love in the club, by Richard Chiem
She is excited as one always is by something new, someone new. She says, The older I get the more I realize life is all about nodding at people and looking them in the eye. She says she has went through oceans and oceans of silent people. She wants to find her Gila Monster. Hernando walks into the bar disheveled as though his movements and mind are in an emotional mess, as though he feels in...
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The Empty Sea by Lucia Giri
What does one do,
The logic of one’s body
The logic of one’s sex
Is absent.
The form is complete
The eyes can see
Yet inside,
There lies an empty sea.
No blood to escape
It seemed so natural
No creation’s canvas
It was deemed natural
The perfect victim
For raw, untamed desires
Again and again and again
The southern ecstasy
The perfect victim
As the repugnant
civil space of shallow...
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Amazon's New Kindle Social Media Feature: Making... →
… With @author, readers can ask questions directly from their Kindles while they are reading a book, and the questions get sent to authors’ Twitter accounts as well as to their author pages at Amazon for all to see. Anyone who has purchased items from Amazon.com can reply to an existing question or ask a new one, and all visitors to Amazon.com can read any current question or...
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Portrait Of The Artist Defying Death by James...
Death is looking dapper, not skeletal at all like in Holbein’s versions. He’s smiling, all teeth and grin like someone I once knew, someone whose smile said, “Go on, turn your back. Get comfortable. I see you alone? I gut you like a trout.” Crude, yes, but he would do that … say it, do it, Death. He’s death, Death is. Who he is. What he is.
...
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Entropy: Play →
jpreese:
Remove the silver slippers and slip them in a pocket safe from sin. Your slip slides against silken skin as you climb the slippery stairs of the child’s slide to slide down until your toes touch tawny sand. Slip between the swings and sunset surf to take another sip of gin. Try to fill the…
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Your Friends Are Not Your Audience: A Disturbing... →
«…who you are talking to no longer has anything to do with who you think you’re talking to. You can tell a story to your narrow circle a hundred times and have nobody bat an eyelash, but the minute you step outside that circle, everything is completely different. And that can underscore the way that a sudden explosion of your audience can give what you say a completely unexpected...