NEXT WORKSHOP: Tuesday, September 7, 2010
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F**K ME, RAY BRADBURY... This music video, celebrating the American literary gem, has become an Internet sensation. Reportedly, the ninety-year-old Bradbury has seen the video and approves. The twenty-three-year-old woman doing the singing is Rachel Bloom, an NYU grad who wrote the song. It's hilarious, but don't watch with the sound on while the kids are around. Go to: YouTube.
VERISIMILITUDE... For a writer it's the art of making a story true or real. But BCWW members know that the indisciminate laying on of facts in order to bring out the reality of a character or scene can get into the way of the story. Tim O'Brien, whose classic anti-war story "The Things They Carried" should be read by all, has addressed this issue in. Go to: The Atlantic.
WE ARE DOOMED! A rare and used book dealer in Sacramento, California, shares verbatim the conversations he's had with people calling or entering his store. Go to Bookmine. Read and laugh--or weep.
I write like...
SARAH PALIN ... A pinhead on one hand, the Republican Party's best hope on the other. But give this backwoods babe credit: she has her own lexicon. Alexandira Petri in The Washington Post writes: "Maybe she'll prove me wrong and refudiate will catch on. But if she runs in 2012, I hope we're horpswangling enough to grountify her. And I mean that in the nicest possible way."
I WRITE LIKE ... A statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers. Paste in a few paragraphs of some of your own writing, then click on Analyze.
WORD FAILS ME. "Why doesn't Microsoft's writing tool actually help writers?" By Mark Gimein at Slate's Big Money.
BAD WRITING: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? "Crappy prose is our most abundant resource, so let's put it to work." By Laura Miller in Salon.
To sample some really, really bad writing -- both individually and collectively -- go to the BCWW's 2003 group novel, The Yellow Bus. The authors seemed to have no idea of what came before nor who the major characters were nor what their role in the story was.
AUTHORS UNBOUND ONLINE. No so tacky to self-publish your book anymore. Virginia Heffernan in The New York Times Magazine says, "Book publishing is simply becoming self-publishing."
A CINDERELLA STORY. How unknown Paul Harding's oft-rejected novel, Tinkers, won a Pulitzer Prize. By Motoko Rich in The New York Times.
BETRAYING SALINGER. How a small publisher, Orchises Press, got the reclusive J.D. Salinger to agree to a book deal -- but blew it. By Roger Lathbury in New York Magazine.
HARD TO GET RICH AS WRITERS (MOST OF THEM). Using data compiled in 2008, the National Endowment for the Arts analized all areas of artistic endeavor. Full-time authors and writers had a median age of 44 with a mean income of just over $50,000 in 2005 dollars. Revealing study.
BOOK COLLECTING AND THE E-BOOK. "The [Kindle], which consigns all poetry and prose to the same homely fog-toned screen, leaves nothing to the experience of books but reading. This strikes me as honest, even revolutionary." By Virginia Heffernan in The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
BOOKS IN THE AGE OF THE iPAD. Book-designer Craig Mod says, "Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused." About the printed book, Mod says, "good riddance."
THE GOOD EARTH. The Bucks County literary experience by Angelina Sciolla in Bucks & Montgomery County Living.
MORE RULES FOR WRITING FICTION. Inspired by Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing, The Guardian.UK asked some two dozen writers to list their own rules, ranging from the practical to the familial. Trust me, this is required reading.
A WRITING CAREER BECOMES HARDER TO SCALE. "The writer's apprenticeship -- or perhaps, the writer's lot -- is this miserable trifecta: uncertainty, rejection, disappointment." By Dani Shapiro in the Los Angeles Times.
DON's J.D. SALINGER ENTRY AT ... Book Beat: The Podcast.
DON DELILLO: RARE INTERVIEW. By Charles McGrath in The New York Times.
THE WORLD'S BEST-SELLING NOVELIST IS... JAMES PATTERSON! Patterson's so successful he has a stable of writers to write his books for him, nine published last year alone. Click HERE to read a huge cover-page article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Don interviewed Patterson before he made it big: LISTEN. Wouldn't it be great to be so successful that you don't have to write your own books but can pay scribes to write them for you?
MORE TO PUBLISHING THAN MEETS THE SCREEN. Jonathan Galassi, president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, makes a spirited defense of traditional publishing as opposed to the e-book. In The New York Times.
A GOOD AUTHOR IS HARD TO FIND. A devastating critique of hopeful writers who burden the desks of literary agents with out-and-out crap. By "The Rejectionist" in the Seattle Stranger.
SCREENPLAY ELEMENTS. How to read and understand a screenplay in one easy lesson. By Stuart Cummings Ripley III.
CULT OF AYN RAND. Audio interviews with the most influential people in her career.
STUART CUMMINGS RIPLEY. Improved design for the onlysite on the web dedicated to this now forgotten literary genius. An original project of the BCWW.
E. L. DOCTOROW. Audio interviews with a literary icon.
BCWW REMEMBERS 9/11. Shortly after the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil, members of the BCWW described their thoughts about the disaster in prose and poetry. Click headline above.
WINNERS OF BCWW FICTION CONTEST ANNOUNCED
Alix Ohlin awarded cash prizes to the winners of the Bucks County Writers Workshop's Summer Writing competition during a dinner at the Plumsteadville Inn on August 25, 2009. The top prize winner in the competition, in which workshop members entered short stories based on the theme, "ghosts," was Judith Norkin of Newtown. Second and third prize winners were Chris Bauer of Doylestown and Ilene Raymond Rush of Elkins Park. See pictures from the dinner here. To read the workshop's ghostly stories, click here. To watch the awards presentation via YouTube click video
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Chris Bauer, author of Scars on the Face of God, describes the ordeals of a newly published author by listing numerically his successes and failures. Highly entertaining and instructive. Chris spoke at the BCWW dinner on August 25.
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BOOK BEAT WEBSITE EXPANDED. Long a simple online repository for the CBS Book Beat radio features, the site has been enlarged and broadened in scope to include new audio interviews and book and author news. Writers will find it a helpful resource.
BUDD SHULBERG DEAD. He was ninety-five. A controversial writer caught up in the right-wing's communist witch hunts of the 40s and 50s. Author of What Makes Summy Run and winner of an Oscar for his screenplay On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando. The BCWW's Don Swaim's interview with Schulberg can be heard at Wired for Books.
WHY PEOPLE COLLECT BOOKS by Daniel Krotz, who runs Sow's Ear, a book and antiques shop in the unlikely place of Berryville, Arkansas.
Ohlin
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ALIX OHLIN: TO BE A WRITER YOU MUST ALSO BE A READER
In a forty minute interview with the BCWW's Don Swaim, Ohlin -- author of The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories (Knopf) -- also says fledgling writers must be willing to write badly at first to succeed. Ohlin, who will select the top stories in the BCWW's Summer Writing Project, Ghosts, teaches creative writing at Lafayette College. To hear the complete interview as an mp3 file, click on: Alix Ohlin Interview.
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SALINGER WINS IN SUIT TO STOP UNAUTHORIZED SEQUEL. A Federal judge in New York blocked publication of The Catcher in the Rye sequel written by a Swedish author under the name" J.D. California." Ever hear of copyright? Read Salinger's complaint filed in US Court, Southern District at The Smoking Gun.
13 TIPS FOR ACTUALLY GETTING WRITING DONE. By Gretchen Rubin at The Huffington Post.
NEW SITE LETS WRITERS SELL DIGITAL COPIES. "The Scribd Web site is the most popular of several document-sharing sites that take a YouTube-like approach to text, letting people upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like." By Brad Stone in The New York Times.
COINCIDENCES IN FICTION... Coincidences in real life happen all the time -- sometimes spookily so -- but if you resort to using a coincidence in fiction it often sounds phony and contrived. The thinking person's talk show host, Dick Cavett, has addressed the subject of coincidence in his amusing column Talk Show.
THE GERIATRIC WRITER... Age doesn't seem to be a factor among writers -- and many authors do their best work well into "old age." Read "The Artful Codger" by Charles McGrath in The New York Times Week in Review.
BCWW SPOTLIGHTED IN FEATURE ARTICLE
An extensive article in Bucks Living Magazine, "The Good Earth," details the Bucks County literary experience. Written by Angelina Sciolla for the February 2009 issue, it focuses heavily on the Bucks County Writers Workshop.
"Among Bucks County's many natural assets are its novelists, poets and dramatists, past, present and future."
To read the online version go to Bucks Living.
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ABOUT THAT BOOK ADVANCE... "...the fact that 7 out of 10 titles do not earn back their advance, the system doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon." By Michael Meyer in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.
IN PRAISE OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY. "In an age pressed for time, rediscovering the pleasures of compression in the work of masters such as Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever and Donald Barthelme." By A.O. Scott in The New York Times.
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SIX WORD STORY PROJECT
The idea was for BCWW members to write a story in six words, no more no less, similiar to the one Hemingway said was the best he ever wrote. Here's Hemingway's: For Sale. Baby's shoes. Never worn.
In six words Hemingway says it all. We wanted to see if the workshop's six-word stories could be as powerful and poignant as Hemingway's. To read the results click on the image to the left.
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A RECESSION ONLY STEINBECK COULD LOVE. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is currently a major player in the NEA's "Big Read" community events around the nation. "Steinbeck would think that we're getting just what we deserve. And he'd like it," says Rachel Dry in The Washington Post.
Purdy | JAMES PURDY DIES AT 92 Hard to categorize although with a cult following, Purdy never enjoyed a wide audience, but he was truly an original. Despite his severe image, Purdy was friendly and mannerly, and the BCWW's Don Swaim interviewed him three times. The interviews can be heard at Wired for Books. Purdy's obit here. Gore Vidal wrote a profile of Purdy, The Novelist as Outlaw.
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Photo by Gian Luiso
PEARL BUCK'S 'MISSING' MANUSCRIPT GOES ON DISPLAY IN BUCKS COUNTY. The 400-page manuscript of The Good Earth by the Nobel Prize-winning author is on display in the library of the Pearl S. Buck House in Hilltown. By Hilary Bentman in The Intelligencer.
A REBIRTH FOR JOHN CHEEVER? A new Cheever biography accompanies two fresh editions of Cheever's work published by the Library of America. Charles McGrath in The New York Times Sunday Magazine says Cheever's reputation seems to have been prematurely shortchanged.
CAN'T. STOP. WRITING. Joyce Carol Oates: 100 books in 45 years; John Updike: 60 books in 50 years. Excess literary productivity? By Geoff Nicholson in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.
THE WRITER AND HIS BOOZE. Brian McDonald, a former bartender, describes how he was drawn to authors who wrote about and experienced the effects of alcohol. In The New York Times.
MAILER'S FINAL GIFT. Lawrence Schiller in The Daily Beast.com describes Norman Mailer's last days and how his literary legacy is being kept alive with the creation of the Norman Mailer Writers Colony on Cape Cod.
The New Yorker
HOW DO I SELL MY E-BOOK? "My passion for old books gets to the one thing I dislike about Amazon.com's generally admirable Kindle digital book reader..." By Stephen Wildstrom in Business Week.
SELF-PUBLISHERS FLOURISH IN DOWN PUBLISHING MARKET. As traditional publishers prune their booklists, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies. By Motoko Rich in The New York Times.
 Updike | JOHN UPDIKE DEAD AT 76
The acclaimed Pennsylvania-born novelist died of lung cancer in Massachusetts on January 27. Obit. Arguably, he should have won the Nobel Prize. The BCWW's Don Swaim interviewed Updike in 1984. Listen at Wired for Books. To hear Don's actual CBS Radio broadcast go to Book Beat-Updike.
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Shoe
ORCHISES PRESS: A GOOD YEAR MIGHT NET $12,000. For publisher Roger Lathbury the printed word is its own reward. By Ian Shapira in the Washington Post.
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NOVELIST ALIX OHLIN TO JUDGE BCWW SUMMER WRITING PROJECT Ohlin, author of two books of fiction (Knopf) and an appearance in the Best American Short Stories of 2005, will select the three winning entries. The project, "Ghosts," is open to Bucks County Writers Workshop members only. Submissions must be in by June 30, 2009. Ohlin, who studied at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, teaches creative writing at Lafayette College. For more information click HERE or on Ohlin's image to the left.
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FICTION READING IS UP! The National Endowment for the Arts says adults who read fiction, poetry, and plays rose from 46.7 percent in 2002 to 50.2 percent in 2008. By Bob Thompson in the Washington Post.
AMERICA'S MOST LITERATE CITIES 2008. The study by Central Connecticut State University focuses on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.
PLEASE NOTE
The articles and cartoons posted in
2008 have been moved to the ARCHIVES folder |
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