Welcome to Booklifenow.com, a site that serves as support for and a supplement to my new book Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer.
Jeff VanderMeer | 9 March 2010
Cynthia Ward on “Up in the Air” and Diversity
Cynthia Ward and Nisi Shawl are guestblogging on Booklifenow this week. Here’s Cynthia’s first solo post.
[SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t seen the movie Up in the Air, you may want to skip this post.]
I don’t own a television and rarely get to the movies, so I tend to mentally drift into a happy fantasy world, one in which I imagine Hollywood has finally started to reflect the everyday human diversity you find merely by driving off a movie lot onto the L.A. streets.
My fantasy world is not, however, one in which all Hollywood releases have become great works of art. So I’m always pleasantly surprised to encounter an exceptional movie like Up in the Air. You get strong writing, sharp dialogue, superior acting, and even the occasional unpredictable plot twist. You also get timeliness, since its topic is corporate downsizing.
What you don’t get so much is diversity.
I should probably provide some context, because, after all, if the movie were set in Maine, and featured a man driving all over Bangor firing people, no one remotely familiar with the state would be surprised if the guy’s boss and coworkers were all white.
However, given that protagonist Ryan Bingham lives in the Midwest and jets all over the United States firing people, this is a remarkably white movie. His coworkers, his boss, his lover, his siblings, and their friends and families—white. Racial diversity is pretty much confined to the characters being fired, which gives the unfortunate message—oubtless unintentional, but still present—that minorities exist to be fired.
Jeff VanderMeer | 8 March 2010
Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward on ROAARS and The Unmarked State
Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward are guestblogging here on Booklifenow all this week. Their book Writing the Other is a remarkable exploration of character, situation, and perception. It’s a recommended text in Booklife – JeffV
Cynthia and I want to begin our joint stint as guest bloggers here by sharing an excerpt from Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, the book we wrote together based on the workshop we co-teach. The excerpt will help you get into the spirit of our upcoming posts, which are going to riff on related topics
First, we’ll define a couple of the terms we use:
The unmarked state—Possessing demographic characteristics considered “unremarkable” by the dominant culture.
ROAARS—This is an acronym we created to talk about a group of differences from the unmarked state that are, in this culture, considered to be deeply significant differences. These differences are: Race, (sexual) Orientation, Age, Ability, Religion, Sex.
Keep those concepts in mind as you read the book excerpt below. – Nisi Shawl
Matt Staggs | 5 March 2010
Friday’s Links: poor grammar, rich authors and the psychology of romantic fiction
First-time author Josephine Angelini gets seven figure book deal for her YA trilogy.
Journalist and writer on the future of libraries Marilyn Johnson on Bat Segundo.
Jon Stewart to host BookExpo America.
Books to be reinvented as tablets become mainstream.
The worst grammar mistakes ever.
James Cameron defends author of disputed Hiroshima book.
Evolutionary psychologists turn their attention to romantic fiction.
German book sales down 7.5% without last year’s Stephenie Meyer sales.
Matt Staggs is a literary publicist and the proprietor of Deep Eight LLC, a boutique publicity agency utilizing the best publicity practices from the worlds of traditional media and evolving social technologies. He has worked in the fields of public relations and journalism for almost a decade. In addition to his work as a publicist, Matt is a book reviewer and writer whose work appears in both print and web publications.
Tamara Sellman | 3 March 2010
Everything I’ve learned about writing this year I’ve relearned by watching the Olympics [series Part Two]
On Monday, I brought up some thoughts inspired by 10 days spent watching the recent winter Olympics in Vancouver on TV. Here are two more lessons I culled which offer relevance and perspective for writers:
◊ Expect to earn your medals every time.
Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis kinda blew it in Torino. She hotdogged her way to a second place in women’s snowboard cross when she had the gold medal practically around her neck on that last slope.
Jacobellis has had to live that down for the last 4 years and went to Vancouver hoping to redeem herself. It didn’t quite happen: this year, Read the rest of this entry »
Jeff VanderMeer | 28 February 2010
Welcome Tamara Kaye Sellman, This Week’s Guest Blogger
From time to time we’ll have guest bloggers here at Booklifenow during 2010. This next week, Tamara Kaye Sellman will be blogging. Be sure to stop by for her perspective on writing, the writing life, and much more!
If you’re not familiar with Sellman, here’s a short overview…
Matt Staggs | 26 February 2010
Friday’s Links: Trolls, Teens and Magazines
Tomorrow is National Magazine Day. Time to “Attack the Stack.”
There are no guarantees, in writing or in life.
Web surfer recovers stolen Descartes letter.
Agony Column interviews Dan Simmons.
Keeping out the trolls: relevancy in user-generated content.
What is the worst sentence you ever wrote?
Nintendo makes moves into book market.
Thousands of authors opt out of Google Book plan.
Ask the editor: do edits change style?
Matt Staggs is a literary publicist and the proprietor of Deep Eight LLC, a boutique publicity agency utilizing the best publicity practices from the worlds of traditional media and evolving social technologies. He has worked in the fields of public relations and journalism for almost a decade. In addition to his work as a publicist, Matt is a book reviewer and writer whose work appears in both print and web publications.
