On Writing and Publishing

Gatsby Lives! You might have seen the piece written by Sara Rimer in the New York Times about high school students (mostly smart immigrant kids going to schools like Boston Latin) who are reading The Great Gatsby and connecting with Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel and the famous image at the end of the book where F. Scott writes about the “green light” that lured the Dutch settler to the new land. What struck me was not so much their interpretation of the famous ending of the book, but that Fitzgerald was even being read by this generation of first- and second-generation immigrants in America. As the TIMES article points out Gatsby, the novel, “had fallen into near obscurity” by the time Fitzgerald died in 1940. It came back into vogue in the 1950s and 1960s when a trade paperback version was reissued. But also because of the biography of Zelda Fitzgerald written . . .

This article appeared a few days ago in the LA TIMES. It was written by Alex Pham. If you are a  published writer or want to become a published writer, you should read this article on self publishing and the future (and past) of publishing. • Joe Konrath can’t wait for his books to go out of print. When that happens, the 40-year-old crime novelist plans to reclaim the copyrights from his publisher, Hyperion Books, and self-publish them on Amazon.com, Apple Inc.’s iBooks and other online outlets. That way he’ll be able to collect 70% of the sale price, compared with the 6% to 18% he receives from Hyperion. As for future novels, Konrath plans to self-publish all of them in digital form without having to leave his house in Schaumburg, Ill. “I doubt I’ll ever have another traditional print deal,” said the author of “Whiskey Sour,” “Bloody Mary” and . . .

According to recent articles in Publishers Weekly and The Writer’s Chronicle publishing is a woman’s place. 85% of all publishing employees with fewer than three years experience are now women. Agent Jason Pinter says, “I hope it doesn’t get worse–if 85% of the industry is female–it’s hard to think that acquisitions aren’t in some way affected by that.” But Lindy Hess, director of the graduate Columbia Publishing Course, compares publishing to teaching: a field traditionally open to women. She also added that women tend to read more then men! And add to that insult (for men!) the Washington Post wrote that in the years 2008-2009, for the first time in U.S. history, women earned more doctorates than men. According to the Council of Graduate Schools: 28,962 doctoral degrees went to women and 28,469 to men. But what about ‘show me the money’? Well, here men out score women. According to Publishers Weekly’s . . .

In Frank MacShane’s book on the Life of John O’Hara there is an interesting paragraph on style. O’Hara, says MacShane, thought of style mainly as a way of solving problems. For example, in fiction he believed that the way to create a convincing character was through dialogue. “Nothing,” he wrote, “could so quickly cast doubt on, and even destroy, the author’s character as bad dialogue. If the people did not talk right, they were not real people.” O’Hara had developed his gift for dialogue mainly in his short stories. The problem he faced in his novels was this: how to structure the book so that the narrative remained alive while the necessary information was presented?  He is not, of course, the only novelist to face this problem. O’Hara way of solving it came about (in part) from reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Reading these . . .

Fifty years ago, when I was going through Training for Peace Corps/Ethiopia at Georgetown University, I heard Katherine Anne Porter was speaking at a creative writing program, also taking place on campus, so I cut my classes and went to hear one of the most famous writers of the South. Katherine Anne was not part of the Agrarian movement, (men like John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, etc.) but she was a great short story writer and had that year (1962) published her only novel, Ship of Fools. Talking about her novel, she made two points that I still remember, fifty years after sneaking into the lecture hall. One point was that she had written the last chapter of her novel first, and that was 20 years before she finished writing and publishing the book. She said that she had to write the last chapter first as she needed to know how the novel ended before . . .

In his introduction to his novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1984) Mailer thanked Roger Donoghue [a former boxer who trained Marlon Brando for the movie, “On the Waterfront”] for telling him a story that resulted in a title for Mailer’s novel. It came from a story that Donoghue told Mailer: Frank Costello, the Murder Inc. kingpin, and his beautiful girlfriend greet three champion boxers in the Stork Club. Costello demands that each, in turn, dance with the woman, and each nervously complies. The last Willy Pep, suggests that Mr. Costello dance. The title is the punch line is the title of Mailer’s novel. “Tough Guys Don’t Dance,” answered Costello. So, the next time you’re in the Stork Club…

The Elements of Style by William Strunk & E.B. White The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging by the editors of the Post. Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction–and Get It Published by Alfred Fortunato and Susan Rabiner The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner The Portable MFA in Creative Writing by The New York Writers Workshop On Writing Well by William Zinsser Also check out: Poets & Writers magazine (www.pw.org) www.awpwriter.org

Here are a few suggestions to help you write like a writer. 1. Read great books, but also read bad books that will show you how Not to Write! 2. Write about what you know and where you lived and what you did in life. You have a ‘feel’ for that and it will come through in your writing. 3. Write about people and incidents you know. Use the correct names and places to keep it real. Later you can change the names and locations and call it fiction. 4. If you get hung up trying to remember a fact or piece of history, just leave it and move on and get ‘something’ written. You can drown doing research. It’s easy. Writing it hard. 5. Write everyday, even if it is only a few lines. Hemingway, they say, wrote only 50 words a day and then went fishing. (Actually I think he . . .

Want to write a blog? Here is some  basic information on writing one that might be useful, (not that I listen to myself!) 10 blogging tips. Keep your blog item short. Like being in the Peace Corps, it’s: “In, Up, and Out”! No more than 750+ words. Make one point in each blog, then get off the page. Try and post 3 times a week. You want readers to know you are out there and thinking of them. Start your items with a news ‘hook’ or with a great story, then make the point you want to make. Write from the heart, and as if you are having a conversation with a close friend. Don’t try an impress the reader with your prose. Talk about yourself, what you know, and what you have experienced. Be personal and honest.  Cut open your vein and bleed on the computer. Show passion. Write in simple sentences and . . .

Reading a review of Philip Roth’s Nemesis by J.M. Coetzee in the October 28, 2010, The New York Review of Books, I came across a paragraph, and a piece of good advice, that we can benefit from as writers. Coetzee is writing about Roth’s way of providing “how-to’s” in his novels. “Among the subsidiary pleasures Roth provides,” Coetzee writes, “are the expert little how-to essays embedded in the novels: how to make a good glove, how to dress a butcher’s display window.” In his novel, Everyman, for example, Roth has a “modest but beautifully composed little ten-page episode of how to dig a grave.” In other words, the reader comes away from a book by Roth not only being impressed by the story, his language, but also with new knowledge. It is perhaps an old prose trick, but it works. Give the reader something new to chew on. Telling a story, . . .

It has been said that you must be short to be an agent. Not true. If you love books, have a comfortable shoulder on which writers can cry on, can generate ideas and see trends in what readers want to read and learn about, and if you like to be taken out to expensive luncheons paid for by editors, then you might want to think about being an agent. Again, you have to start at the bottom of the food chain as an assistant and do a lot of crappy jobs. The typical tasks of an agent’s assistant is to read and evaluate manuscripts; submit manuscripts to publishers, handle contracts, checks, and royalty statements; write permission with pitch letters; and handle the boss’s schedule, phone, and expenses. The way to get a job as an agent’s assistant is to move to New York City, read mediabistro.com and the half dozen other on-line websites that . . .

Magazine staffs are usually broken down into two divisions: editorial and advertising. Editorial Assistant: Editorial staff are usually subdivided departmentally, depending on the focus and structure of the magazine. Again, the duties of the entry-level editorial assistant are largely administrative and/or clerical–but in addition to these, the assistant may also review manuscripts, give opinions on story proposals, line edit copy, generate story ideas, post items on the website, and even write for the magazine itself. Production cycles are much shorter in magazine publishing than they are in book publishing, since most magazines publish monthly or even weekly. Thus, the world of magazines can at times seem much more frenzied than the world of books, which moves at a slower and more deliberate pace. Advertising Assistant: Advertising assistants at magazines  help their bosses sell advertising space–and have done that, work very hard to maintain good relationships with advertisers so they’ll continue . . .

A production assistant will work with copy editors, typographers, binders, and designers to help with the actual construction of a book. As more and more publishers realize that an unusual design or arresting cover art cn help sell books, this area of publishing is getting more fun and inventive. Of course, good copy editors have always been and will always be essential to publishing of any sort.

A publicity assistant sends out galleys (early bound and typeset copies of a book) to select book reviewers at newspapers and magazines, maintains and updates lists of reviewers who should receive free copies of the published book one it’s out, works with his/her boss to arrange radio, print, and television interviews for authors, and may work to organize book release parties and signings at bookstores. Additionally, the assistant needs to know all the social media venues like Facebook and Twitter as this, too, is how books are promoted. Publicity assistants go on to become publicity directors–and because good publicity is so important to book sales, the best publicists sometimes move on to corporate marketing and executive publishing levels. There are also two other ‘assistant’ roles, one in marketing where the department seeks to build ways of promoting the book on its own, via web campaigns and book events. There is a  role . . .

The changing, consolidating nature of publishing staff today is that everyone, even assistants in various departments, are taking on more and more responsibility. In the past, where the job of ‘assistant’ use to mean mainly administrative tasks, today the position comes with more and more duties and responsibilities. That said, there are basically three entry level jobs in book publishing. The first one is: Editorial Assistant An editorial assistant, in addition to performing the universal assistant-duties mentioned above, might be called upon to review incoming manuscripts and provide reports to his/her boss; to go through the “slush” pile of unsolicited queries from hopeful authors, and bring anything worth a look to the editor’s attention’ and to work with agents and authors to ensure that contracts are handled and processed correctly. Today, many Editorial Assistants will have their own authors and projects, and participate in editorial meeting where books are presented by . . .