FUNNY WOMEN: Tailoring a Pitch Across Outlets
Hit me if you’re down for this excluze to all your compadbros.
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Posts Tagged: the writing life
The Mentor Series: Emily J. Smith and Chloe Caldwell
Emily J. Smith interviews her mentor, Chloe Caldwell.
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Hurry Up and Wait: Literary Community Is a Platform
What exactly is a platform? How do you create one?
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The Mentor Series: Lisa Locascio and Aimee Bender
Lisa Locascio interviews her mentor, Aimee Bender.
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The Mentor Series: Vanessa Hua and Susan Straight
Vanessa Hua interviews her mentor, Susan Straight.
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The Thread: Art Monsters
I don’t want to be a martyr or a monster. I want to be human.
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Slush Piles in White
The sensibilities of whiteness do not want us to work, do not want us to think, do not want us to imagine outside of its bounds.
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FUNNY WOMEN #157: Habits of Less Successful Writers
So much can be learned from the writing habits of successful writers, but what can we learn from the ones who aren’t doing quite as well?
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CA$H 4 GOLD
I will not end up like these woman, I promise myself, left behind and living in some suburb. I will not be anyone’s baby. I will be a real artist instead, a writer.
...moreThe Long and Winding Road to a Bestseller
In Warren Adler‘s first-ever video portraying his personal story of becoming an enduring novelist, the acclaimed author of The War of the Roses speaks frankly about the trials and tribulations he faced on the road to pursuing his dream. Check out the video after the break!
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Ambiguity as a Daily Experience: Talking with Jess Arndt
Jess Arndt discusses her debut story collection Large Animals, accepting love from other people, human bodies, and fear of the written word.
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Funny Women #152: Features of the Groundbreaking American Writers Museum
We’ll be open as long as the National Endowment for the Arts is.
...moreThe Real Lives of Working Writers
Bestselling and award-winning writers Danielle Trussoni and Walter Kirn host the Writerly podcast, a weekly discussion of all things pertaining to the real lives of working writers. From getting and firing an agent, to book publicity, to contracts, to working with an editor, to writing your first draft—Writerly will cover it all. And, follow Danielle […]
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FUNNY WOMEN #148: The Hindenburg Review Writers’ Workshop
Welcome to the Hindenburg Review Writers’ Workshop!
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Real Evan
Character Evan is pretty impressive; real Evan, not so much—can it be as simple as that?
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #6: What’s Love Got to Do with It?
My sister wrote and published a memoir about our childhood. It’s a good book, and I’m proud of her. It has won awards, and put her in demand on a national speaking circuit. Am I jealous of my little sister? Yep. She’s an engineer by training; I was the artist in the family. By rights, […]
...moreMexico City’s Budding Writing Scene
Writing in Mexico City is like holding a conversation when you’re under the takeoff and landing path of the city’s airplanes: you have to shut up sometimes, to let the noise take over everything, to let the sky split in two before picking up where you left off. As Americans, we tend to forget there […]
...moreThe Existential Crises of Writers
Writers experience all sorts of anxieties and doubts, such that many find themselves taking a spiraling descent into the worst existential crises. No writer should feel alone in this—over at The Millions, Robert Fay writes about the many writers who have fought the long hard battle against nihilism in their writing careers.
...moreA Writer’s Per-Hour Salary
What kind of time could be counted towards the work hours of a writer? Does reading count? Drinking the coffee that bestows much-needed energy? Sitting around daydreaming? Read this hilarious piece imagining all the ways writers might log their hours.
...moreAdmit It! You’re A Writer
For The Millions, Marcia DeSanctis shares how she learned to become a “second-career writer” after resisting her literary ambitions while working as a television news producer: A stifled artist was scratching through all of my work identities, and though my jobs were fascinating I never really had the mettle to soldier on. I turned down more […]
...moreArt Monster Moms
Rufi Thorpe writes for Vela on the responsibilities of writing and motherhood, and the transformation of a woman writer into an “art monster”: But any soldier will tell you that much of the Army is similarly boring and routine. Yet we do not ask a war poet, Do you ever worry your work will become […]
...moreFalse Dichotomy
Can women really have it all? Like, all of it? But how could they possibly have multiple things at the same time? How can they even think human thoughts after they’ve subsumed their corporeal selves into an all-encompassing prison of motherhood? For Lit Hub, miraculous hybrid mother/writer Diana Abu-Jaber explains that art and babies aren’t […]
...moreDon’t Quit Your Day Job
But dip into nearly any of Stevens’s poems, to the last, and be braced by a voice like none other, in its knitted playfulness and in its majesty. For most of his life, Wallace Stevens worked a day job as an insurance executive, and yet he still found time to become one of the greatest […]
...moreThe Literary Hustle
Even after authors finish writing their book, they have plenty of work to do to promote it. With so many books and limited space in media outlets, the literary hustle is a major part of any book launch. Over at Publishers Weekly, Camille Perri looks at the challenges and subjectivity of book coverage: I also […]
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Writing My Context
I know being a mother does not limit me. But I also know that it defines me.
...moreFeel Less Dumb
Debut novelist Adrienne Celt (The Daughters, 2015) has some advice for you. Not writing advice, of course. No, Celt would like to help you with your taxes: I think it’s nice when people stand up and say “I HAVE BEEN THERE. I FELT VERY DUMB, AND CAN HELP YOU FEEL LESS DUMB YOURSELF,” especially in the […]
...moreMetaphor in Retrograde
Is your big break finally coming? Will you get that novel finished? Are you about to be struck over the head with a mallet of inspiration? All of these questions answered and more, in your February 2016 writer’s horoscope.
...moreLiving the Frugal Writer’s Life
Over at Lit Hub, Sunil Yapa shares some guidelines on living cheaply as an up-and-coming writer. High up on his list: living outside of the United States: I believe at some point all writing roads pass through New York but you don’t need to live in New York City to be a writer. In fact, it’s probably […]
...moreThe Writing Life in Nigeria
A new essay by Nigerian author A. Igoni Barrett (Love Is Power, or Something Like That and Blackass) highlights the ways poverty and struggle work against those in Nigeria who would be writers: I found nothing there for me [at his university in Ibadan]. No friends with similar tastes in books. No literary journals by […]
...moreGetting There
Success in the literary world often demands money in the real world. For Lit Hub, Lorraine Berry calls out the system that excludes working class voices from the conversation: How much more dedication did one need to prove beyond that? But that’s not exactly something you can put on a resume.
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