Remember that Web site Stuff White People Like? Or that other Web site, the Angry Journalist? If they got together and made a baby, it'd be Stuff Journalists Like.
You can learn that journalists like things such as reporter's notebooks (#15), writing standing up (#84), free food (#30) and procrastinating (#63).
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
The stuff of common jokes
Woman: What do you do?
Man: Me? Oh, I write books.
Woman: How interesting! Have you sold anything recently?
Man: Why, yes. My couch, my car and my flat-screen television.
A snarkier writer-father might have added, “and I sold those things to pay for your private school tuition!” But instead it got me thinking that there was a real problem here. Not just a small problem involving issues of respect between one writer and one teenager, but rather a national problem of respect where being a writer has become so widely associated with being a loser that we have become the stuff of common jokes.
Ah, I think anyone in my writing group relates to this idea. And all my journalist-newspaper-writing friends feel some empathy here too.
From Bail out the writers! in the New York Times.
Man: Me? Oh, I write books.
Woman: How interesting! Have you sold anything recently?
Man: Why, yes. My couch, my car and my flat-screen television.
A snarkier writer-father might have added, “and I sold those things to pay for your private school tuition!” But instead it got me thinking that there was a real problem here. Not just a small problem involving issues of respect between one writer and one teenager, but rather a national problem of respect where being a writer has become so widely associated with being a loser that we have become the stuff of common jokes.
Ah, I think anyone in my writing group relates to this idea. And all my journalist-newspaper-writing friends feel some empathy here too.
From Bail out the writers! in the New York Times.
Read it and weep
The end of days is here for the publishing industry -- or it sure seems like it. On Dec. 3, now known as "Black Wednesday," several major American publishers were dramatically downsized, leaving many celebrated editors and their colleagues jobless. The bad news stretches from the unemployment line to bookstores to literature itself.
Read it here on Salon.
Read it here on Salon.
Friday, December 19, 2008
How To Write Your Memoir
From Reader's Digest:
You don't need to have had a hardscrabble youth in order to write a memoir. You don't need eccentric parents. Believe it or not, you don't need anything dramatic. And you certainly don't have to publish it.
Read the full story here.
You don't need to have had a hardscrabble youth in order to write a memoir. You don't need eccentric parents. Believe it or not, you don't need anything dramatic. And you certainly don't have to publish it.
Read the full story here.
More best-of lists
This guy totally schooled me in how to collect best-of lists.
Largehearted boy, a music blog, has gathered up dozens and dozens of these things here.
The list is even subdivided by category -- audiobooks, comics and graphic novels, science, teens, und so weiter.
It's truly an impressive roundup.
Largehearted boy, a music blog, has gathered up dozens and dozens of these things here.
The list is even subdivided by category -- audiobooks, comics and graphic novels, science, teens, und so weiter.
It's truly an impressive roundup.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Turning political scandal into literary gold
OK, I don't know if it's literary gold, but Salon's imagination of the Blago scandal is entertaining. Combine FBI-recorded conversations with some David Mamet and you get Glengarry Rod Blagojevich:
ROD BLAGOJEVICH, AKA BLAGO, the governor of Illinois, is at his tacky Ravenswood home, on the phone. His wife is sprawled on the couch behind him, petting a fur coat made entirely of hundreds of white kittens. Blago waves a copy of the Chicago Tribune as he speaks.
Read the whole thing on Salon here.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH, AKA BLAGO, the governor of Illinois, is at his tacky Ravenswood home, on the phone. His wife is sprawled on the couch behind him, petting a fur coat made entirely of hundreds of white kittens. Blago waves a copy of the Chicago Tribune as he speaks.
Read the whole thing on Salon here.
Writer=artist?
Artists at Work Forum: How to Turn Your Art Into a Career
Join local artists (photographer Dawoud Bey, public artist Juan Angel Chavez, painter and professor Joyce Owens, and artist, poet, and actor Tony Fitzpatrick) as they share their secrets to success and missteps on the way to becoming successful artists. FREE at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E Washington St). 6-7:30pm. 312-744-6630.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Join local artists (photographer Dawoud Bey, public artist Juan Angel Chavez, painter and professor Joyce Owens, and artist, poet, and actor Tony Fitzpatrick) as they share their secrets to success and missteps on the way to becoming successful artists. FREE at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E Washington St). 6-7:30pm. 312-744-6630.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Stupendously ultimate first paragraph
Have you written a stupendously awesome first paragraph to a work in progress? If so, maybe think about entering lit agent Nathan Bransford's blog contest. The winner will get "their choice of a partial critique, query critique or 15 minute phone conversation in which we can discuss topics ranging from reality TV shows to, you know, publishing. Your choice. Runners up will receive query critiques and/or other agreed-upon prizes."
Details on Bransford's blog here.
Details on Bransford's blog here.
Monkeying around
Imagine a nursing home attendant escorting a very hirsute, very old George Burns into the solarium, and you're halfway to picturing the scene. The sinewy, solemn, 4-foot-tall Cheeta, somewhat grizzled and a bit threadbare, stared straight ahead. It wasn't easy reconciling this character with the lovable scamp who had made a career out of getting Tarzan out of serious trouble.
Just a little monkey business for good reading. From Lie of the Jungle: The Truth about Cheeta the Chimpanzee in the Washington Post.
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