Quote of the Day (and Perhaps Millenium)

From a June 2008 NY Times interview with well-known novelist, essayist, and "public intellectual" Gore Vidal, who is getting way up there in years and has gotten to the point where he pulls no punches. (Truth be told, he was never one to pull punches even in his heyday.)

NYT: Do you read a lot of contemporary fiction these days?
Vidal: Like everyone else, no, I don’t.

Ha! The writer's temperament is to 1) giggle at such a statement in a funny-cuz-it's-true sorta way and then 2) to keep right on writing anyway, just because.

Lit Mags in Alabama

For next Tuesday, make a list of all the literary magazines you can find in Alabama. Rank your top-3 in terms of "prestige" and your top-3 in terms of accessibility to an unpublished writer. Be able to explain your choices.

Week #8 Prompts

...Start a story in the present day. A land-line telephone rings in an old house. [Probably this house is situated just outside a village that stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Or not.] Let the phone ring. And ring. While it's ringing, write a story in flashback from the perspective of the character who is ignoring the phone.

...Write 25 lines of blank verse about the Birmingham Zoo.

...Write an essay about the cultural significance, as you understand/experience it, of the McDonalds french fry.

Closing the Loop on Agents

I want to reiterate that, in talking about how a book gets published, I'm not trying to discourage you. I just want you to have a realistic idea of the process. I also want to give you a sense of how you can successfully navigate it. Two things will make it infinitely easier:

Patience.

Patience is required because writing is a longitudinal pursuit. Remember that you'll still be a "young writer" for another 20+ years. In Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, he argues that success is (among other factors) largely a result of something he calls the 10,000-hour Rule. To be really good at something, says Gladwell, you have to do it for 10,000 hours. Twenty hours a week for ten years. Depending on how you use your Silent Studio time (!), you're varying degrees of way ahead of the game.

Patience is also crucial because, even after you've put in your 10,000 hours, publishing -- whether it's a single poem or a massive Fantasy tetrology -- isn't so much a meritocracy. It's all subjective. As you learn your markets, you'll be better able to target your potential audience, but it still takes good timing and luck. And patience.

Friends.

First and foremost, it's easier to do anything when you have a vibrant life of connections -- whether they're writing connections or not. But as far as publishing goes, the hands-down best way to get your work noticed by the right people is to have a personal connection with them. Or at least to have friends who have direction connections with them. Here's what our good friend Nathan Bransford has to say about the subject, but keep in mind that this holds true when you're trying to get work in literary magazines, get grants, attend selective conferences and/or grad programs, etc:

Referrals are a great way to find an agent, and for many of your more experienced/legendary agents they're darn near essential. And it's easy to see why -- you're coming in with an endorsement from someone the agent respects, you've got their attention, and you're more likely to get a thorough look.

How do you get a referral? It's kind of tricky. If you don't have preexisting personal connections, the best way to do this, especially if you live in a big city, is to get involved with local writers communities, fraternize with writers, and put yourself in a position where your work will be seen by other established writers. Genuinely (and not selfishly) invest in those writers and you may find that they will invest in you -- trust me, they remember what it was like to be an aspiring writer. If you don't live in a city, get your stories published in journals, become involved with writers' blogs and online writer's communities, and really invest in authors until you are virtual friends.

Now, notice that I didn't suggest the "e-mail random writers and ask for referrals out of the blue" approach, which has about a zero chance of success. These things have to evolve organically.

Organically. As in, like real human beings do. So dust off Ye Olde Dale Carnegie and get out there and mingle, people!

I guess the last thing I'll say about publishing a book is that it's probably best to think of it as a by-product of the patience, hard work, and discipline to keep writing combined with a willingness to establish and maintain connections with other writers. By and large, those are all good things in and of themselves. The book's just gravy.

Okay, in the righthand column, under "Useful Publishing Links," I've added a link to Bransford's blog. I've also included another agent's blog, a woman named Janet Reid. They both have links to other blogging agents as well, so you should be able to get a range of voices, opinions, and insights about commercial publishing.

P&W Interview: Four Editors

FYI: Here's an interview with a gaggle of book editors. A pull quote from the set-up:

While it goes without saying that our problems are nothing compared with those of many industries, one's heart can't help but ache for the literary magazines and publishing houses that won't be around in a year; the unemployed editors, publicists, and marketing people with mortgages to pay; the authors whose first books are being published now, or a month from now, or anytime soon.

But difficult times don't have to be joyless times. As I listened to these four accomplished young book editors talk about what they do, I was reminded of a simple and enduring truth, trite as it may sound: We are all—writers, agents, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers—in this together. And there are concrete things we can do to connect with one another more effectively. These editors are full of insight about how to do just that.

See? Connection! Writing is an act of CONNECTION!!

Prep for Mrs. Rutsky's Visit Wednesday

You'll notice the Finaid.org link on the righthand column of the blog. Here's a specific link to the Expected Family Contribution Calculator. (This is the one Mrs. Rutsky wants you to check out with your parents tax forms, if possible.)

Also take some time to make a list of expenses for things you think you'll need in order to be completely content in college -- and then a more bare-bones list of absolute essentials you can't live without.

Mrs. Rutsky will be back with us on Wednesday afternoon.

Week #7 Prompts

Write a poem to, for, or about Robert Mugabe.

Write an essay about winter weather in Alabama.

Write a story in which a small blue stone plays a crucial role.

Literary Agents and Commercial Publishing

A couple or three links to check out for our conversation on Thursday:

...Here's a literary agent's blog. Informative stuff. Scroll down and pay particular attention to his "Essentials" link list. (Also of interest: this post on the number and type of queries he received just over the Presidents' Day weekend [that's three days to you and me]).

...Here's an exhaustive list of agents in North America, along with the colorful commentary of one writer who has spent a good bit of time sparring with them.

...Finally, here's an excerpt from a great interview in Poets & Writers with a well-known agent named Nat Sobel:

How is being a writer different today than it was when you started out as an agent?
I think it's easier for the writer. Today writers are a lot more aware that they need an agent than they were then. The so-called slush pile at publishing houses is almost nonexistent today—a lot of writers languished in those slush piles for years. I think writers were often tempted by ads run in the writers magazines by agents who charged exorbitant fees to have their manuscripts evaluated," and much of that has disappeared. By and large, writers get responses from agents much quicker today because of e-mail. I think the process has fewer mines in the ground for writers to avoid. But on the other hand, it's much more difficult to get published if you're a fiction writer. It's a bit of a tradeoff.

Why do you think it's more difficult to get published as a fiction writer?
I think you have to really look at the market today. If you look at the Deals page of Publishers Weekly, nine out of the ten deals described are nonfiction books. There certainly is a very strong feeling in the publishing world that fiction is chancier—absolutely chancier—than nonfiction. Today, you have to have all sorts of other reasons to publish a first novel—other than that it happens to be very good.

What do you mean by that?
We keep hearing this phrase, "What's the platform?" What's the [expletive] platform? The first time I heard the word platform was at a writers conference. I was on the dais with another agent and she was talking about "the platform." I thought, "What the [expletive] is a platform? What is she talking about?" Well, what it is is this: What does the author bring to the table? Talent is not enough. The number of slots open to fiction on a publisher's list is being reduced all the time. But that wasn't always the case.

What do you see as the reason for that shift?
I think there are a lot of reasons. It's not just the conglomeratization of publishing and the slow disappearance of the independent booksellers. But maybe it's easier for the sales rep to go and sell a nonfiction book that he hasn't read, or she hasn't read, than it is for the rep to go in and sell a first novel that he or she hasn't read. As the sales forces of the major publishing houses have become decimated, there really is very little time for any of these reps to read the first fiction on their list. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Almost more to the point, I think, is how agenting has changed in the last ten years.

I read something where you were talking about how many agents there are now, as opposed to the old days when there weren't as many, and the importance to a writer of picking a good one.
Yes. And how do you know if you've got a good one?


Want to know how? Click here for the entire interview. Pay particular attention to page 4 of the interview.

Week #6 Prompts

Write a story in which the surface tension driving the narrative is the naming of a new pet. Use that tension to imply some deeper, less obvious tension in the story.

Write an essay of less than 750 words in which you describe how to do or make something that is essential to your personality.

Write a poem in six fairly uniform tercets. Use the following rhyme scheme:

a
b
a

b
c
b

c
d
c

d
e
d

e
f
e

f
a
f

Week #5 Prompts

Write a story about a spy. It should be a fast, easy read. The first paragraph should include the following features: a dusty open-air cafe; Tangiers; a small, cylindrical device; a boy who doesn't speak English and is either blind or barefoot, but not both; hot tea in clear glass cups; and an explosion.

Write a villanelle to, for, or about Aldrich Ames.

Write an essay about a time when you could not keep an important secret.