Jeff VanderMeer | 28 February 2010
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
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.
Matt Staggs | 22 February 2010
Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s own ten rules of writing, The Guardian asked successful authors like Michael Moorcock and Joyce Carol Oates to submit their own lists of writing do’s and don’ts. You can read them all here.
While most of these are extremely useful – and it’s always fun to see how your favorite writer thinks – it got me to thinking about rules that aren’t so useful, and how things that we once thought were set in stone have a tendency to change as we advance in our understanding of our art.
I used to feel like I couldn’t write without a formal outline. I felt like that was the way “real” writers wrote. Despite that, it just didn’t work for me, and eventually I became brave enough to abandon that rule in favor of my own methods. I’ve since had several of my personal rules come and go as my writing has matured. What about you? How have your own personal rules for writing changed? What’s the most dramatic reversal or abandonment of a rule that you’ve experienced in your career? Have any managed to survive the passage of time?
Matt Staggs | 19 February 2010
Kirkus Reviews officially announces sale to Herbert Simon.
Were the mummy wrappings recycled into nineteenth century printing paper?
Google Book plans still under scrutiny.
J.K. Rowling subject of plagiarism suit.
Publisher Prometheus Books open to unagented submissions.
Take advantage of Galley Cat’s list of Best Book Reviewers on Twitter!
The Daily Beast’s Best Books You Missed This Decade.
Ruth Franklin asks if there’s such a thing as American fiction anymore.
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.
Jeff VanderMeer | 17 February 2010
I’ll be the guest for an interview in Second Life, conducted by Copper Robot around 6pm Pacific, 9pm EST. More details here. Come join us. I’ll be the one flailing around unable to figure out how to sit down. – Jeff
Matt Staggs | 17 February 2010
From time to time I’ll post profiles of book reviewers and critics. Look to these posts to learn what books they prefer to review and how best to pitch them.
The Stranger is an alternative newspaper covering politics, art and culture in Seattle, Washington. Its total readership is over 400,000, with a primary audience of affluent urbanites in their twenties and thirties. The majority of these, according to demographic material available via The Stranger‘s website, are single, college educated males. When queried whether they had bought a hardcover or paperback book over the last 30 days, 81 percent of its readership replied in the affirmative. It is distributed through over 2,000 distribution points throughout the metropolitan area, and is also freely available online. The website receives almost 900,000 unique visitors a year.
Paul Constant is The Stranger‘s Books Editor. In addition to his work with The Stranger, Constant’s work has appeared in the UTNE Reader, The Chicago Reader and The Progressive. Visit The Stranger‘s Book Section here.
When it comes to pitches, Constant said that one of his biggest pet peeves is when authors and publicists don’t seem to know anything about The Stranger or the kinds of books it covers:
“The Stranger has not ever reviewed Christian books or self-help books, except perhaps to mock them once or twice. So why does your e-mail end ”…we believe that this Christian self-help book will be perfect for The Stranger“? Also: If you’re begging the review outlet to make an exception by reviewing your book, you are sending the book to the wrong outlet.”
Ideally, according to Constant, a review should consist of the following:
“A book in the mail with a very, very short letter explaining only the most useful information, such as when the book is published and when, if at all, the author will be coming to my city on tour.”
Constant said that pretty much anything else is extraneous:
“I do not need folders full of other people’s reviews. I don’t want to read other people’s reviews of this book. I don’t want to receive a pitch explaining how to write my review. I don’t want photocopies of the author’s blog, or a photo of the author. I want the book and pretty much just the book. ”
If you’re familiar with The Stranger, and feel that your book would be of possible interest to Constant and his colleagues, send your submission to:
Books Editor
The Stranger
1535 11th Avenue, 3rd floor
Seattle, WA 98122
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.
Matt Staggs | 15 February 2010
In a recent article Inspired by the release of a new biopic on Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, Evan Maloney of The Guardian looked at the ways that movies depict the lives of writers. These movies traffic in a certain ideal of the writer as a lusty soul with a thirst for strong drink, scrawling his or her revelations while dancing on the ever-thinning boundary between genius and madness.
Those of you who write know how far removed this sort of drama is from the hard, lonely work that is the real writer’s lot. This is a craft that requires sacrifice: hours spent hunched over notepads or keyboards, often at odd hours between the demands of work and family is the would-be writer’s toll.
Admittedly, the writer’s work requires a little glamour to hold the attention of the movie-going public, but to what degree do these sorts of popular depictions create and shape the expectations others hold of writers and their work? Further, do writers themselves feel some sort of pressure to live up to what they think a “successful” writer is supposed to be like?
How much of your own life and writing work is or was influenced or shaped by popular culture’s idea of successful authorhood? Has this changed over your career? What about the way other people perceive you? Are there things that you could change for the better? Would you?
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.
Matt Staggs | 12 February 2010
Author Patrick Rothfuss offers advice to new writers.
Author Frank Wisner on the supportive role his publisher plays in his career.
Children’s authors on what it takes to be successful after your first book.
Google defends book settlement; sets stage for court hearing.
How to find an agent for your non-fiction book.
Once successful, is a writer obligated to continue his career?
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.
Jeff VanderMeer | 9 February 2010
In Booklife I have a section on relinquishing all fetishes, which is another way of saying don’t let having to use a fancy pen or special desk get in the way of writing. As I mention in the book I’ve learned to write anywhere at any time, and to never stifle my imagination just because I’m not in the ideal writing situation.
I give this advice in the book because we most commonly procrastinate and find reasons not to write. But the fact is some “fetishes” actually aid our creativity.
Case in point—the photograph above. On the left is a leather-bound, hand-made writing pad I bought in Victoria on Vancouver Island while on my honeymoon. I’d had it in the closet in my office ever since then, more than seven years. Every time I pulled it out, I put it back in the closet again. The thing just seemed so nice, so opulent, that I couldn’t imagine writing in it. And yet I’d bought it because it was tantalizing–it suggested adventures I’d never write about in any other journal.
Well, this past week I finally found the perfect use for it. The paper inside is perfect for writing, but also perfect for art. I’ve started a rather odd story that includes extensive illustrations, and no other writing pad I have gives me the same sensation of effortless motion while both writing and drawing. Even the odd size of it helps, because it better accommodates the art and the words. Suddenly, everything about this impulse purchase that turned me off is helping me get into the groove of writing, energizing me, and recharging my imagination.
Meanwhile, next to it in the photograph is a plain black Moleskine notebook. In it, I’ve written several book reviews and a new short story–a very conventional, Southern Gothic-style story. The utilitarian look and feel of the notebook seems to help me keep focused and on task. I could no more write the reviews and the Southern Gothic story in the opulent oversized writing journal as I could create the illustrated strange story in the Moleskine. Each is perfect for its particular purpose.
So my question to you, because I’m curious, is: Have you had similar experiences with your writing tools, your writing surfaces, your writing life?
A unique writing guide to sustainable careers and sustainable creativity, the first to fully integrate discussion of the role of new media into topics that have always been of interest to writers.
Like what you've read here? Buy Booklife (Amazon.com | Borders | IndieBound) or make a donation (which pays for guest posts).
