Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

What's your favorite style of narration?

Myself, I'm a sucker for good old-fashioned hardboiled first-person narration--I read too many private detective novels and pulp fiction books. But one very important critic disagrees with me.

Today Leon Neyfakh has an article about New Yorker books critic James Wood, exploring why this scholar thinks free indirect narration is best.

That style perches on the shoulder of your characters, allowing their thoughts to blend with the actual narration--eliminating clumsy phrases like "Jason thought" or "Mister Boog pondered." Let's make today Free Indirect Narration Day and write a couple pages like that...

Read this article for its interviews with great writers like Mark Sarvas and Charles Bock. Then pick up a copy of How Fiction Works, Wood's new writing manual. Check it out: 

"'I have heard Columbia M.F.A.’s talk about him somewhat—very admiringly for the most part. They are very struck by his mandate that free indirect narration is the highest form of fiction writing, and I do think quite a few of them have tried to practice that technique,' [said author Becky Curtis.]"

Oddly enough, I just spotted two Wood-ish posts. Read Sarah Weinman's take and Ed Champion's indirect alligator. 

That's the preview to next summer's Watchmen movie, an adaptation of Alan Moore's earth-shaking graphic novel that brought pulp fiction, punk rock and novelistic storytelling to the superhero genre.

I've been foisting this book off on friends for more than a decade, but over the weekend, Batman outdid me a couple thousand times. Check it out at GalleyCat:

"The Watchmen trailer that was shown before The Dark Knight in movie theaters this weekend was promoting the forthcoming motion picture ... Nevertheless, as Bully observed over the weekend, the book promptly vaulted into Amazon's top ten, and as of Sunday afternoon it was the #3 seller on the site" 

Book blogs have been debating what happened ever since. Can movies sell books? M.J. Rose, a Publishing Spot alum, saw it as a triumph for book advertising, a tool that most writers and publishers can't afford.

Besides urging you to read the graphic novel, I had one thing to add for all the storytellers in the audience. The Watchmen, unlike Batman, the Hulk or EVERY SINGLE SUPERHERO, EVER, was a self-contained story. The whole film fits inside a single graphic novel. It's much easier to fall in love with a story that can find on Amazon and buy in single swoop on Amazon. 

Are you tired of self-help books and power of positive thinking schemes that clutter the publishing scene? If you can't beat 'em, write like 'em.

The Wall Street Journal has a whole article about the fine art of fake self-help books. It just ran an essay about Stephen Potter, the author of a surreal set of phony self-help manuals that are still funny fifty years later. Check it out:

"The tone of Potter's books combines the amiability of P.G. Wodehouse with the humorous malice of Evelyn Waugh. Behind them is the Hobbesian presupposition that man lives in a natural state of war. Well, perhaps not all men -- only those of us who are not dazzlingly handsome, impressively athletic, widely learned and deeply cultured, always at ease in the world."

If you want to read more about the fine art of fake self-help, our special guest Ed Park had lots to say on the subject. Check out his interview, How To Write Books-Inside-of-Book to find out how he dreamed up an entire library of imaginary business books in his novel, Personal Days.

Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the link.

How do you build a reading community around a book with a dark, difficult premise?

Andrew Davidson's first novel, The Gargoyle, opens with some tough passages about car accidents and burn victims. His book site features real people telling real stories about being "burned by love." Read a couple and submit your own. Check it out:

"We met at work. He seemed nice. I was a virgin. He seduced me and made me think that if I gave it up for him that we would last."

Bookninja alerts us to some happy news. Choose-your-own-adventure style interactive stories are making a comeback. 

In even odder news, The Avocado Papers is selling first paragraphs to writers. While this seems like one of those kooky web stories that may or may not be true, the satirical site does have an impressive catalog of evocative paragraphs.

That said, the whole battle is figuring out what crazy, unexpected and strange elements I need to put in my first paragraph. Without that process, writing would be pretty boring. What do you think? (Thanks, GalleyCat.)

That's some quality reading advice from a Publishing Spot alum. 

It's always easy to be loud and silly at a public reading--you can read with inflection, you can throw candy or you can sing a song.  But that's not always the best tack. What if you tried to be quiet and intimate? 

Over at Ecstatic Days, author Michelle Richmond has an inspiring story about how she managed to connect with an audience at a small reading. Check it out:

"Because of the small group I decided to forgo the formality of the podium and sound system and do the reading sitting down. It happened that the person sitting closest to me was motorcycle man, and I quickly realized how awkward it is to read to another grown-up face to face, so close one’s knees could almost touch. It’s very intimate, uncomfortably so, more like a date than a reading."

If you are looking for more advice about public readings, follow these links. Our special guest Rachel Shukert once taught us How To Love Public Readings and DeLauné Michel taught us How To Read Your Novel Out Loud.

Can freelance writers survive in this challenging economy?

One of the best freelance book reviewers and podcasters in the business has put all his interviewing efforts on hold--rocked by shrinking book reviewing budgets at his favorite outlets.

Read the sad news here (along with some hope for other options). I was particularly interested in the comments thread, where Ed and a number of other bloggers talk about the rough freelance economy--including thoughts from Largehearted Boy  and Jackie Corley.

Scroll down to check out Ed's comprehensive comment about the economics of freelancing:

"Jesse Thorn, host of “The Sound of Young America,” revealed some astonishing truths in this Metafilter thread. He points out that, despite being distributed on WNYC and WHYY, he only gets $5-10K a year from syndication."

Want to get into a creative writing MFA program? Besides polishing up your best work, you need to master in a very particular genre--the graduate school application essay.

Luckily, the Creative Writing MFA Blog has some crucial intelligence on the subject lurking in the comments section. I've dug out a few of my favorites. Here, a person accepted at Columbia University offers some advice:

"I would think they'd rather hear an applicant speaking in a fresh way about a more mainstream book than write something vague and uninteresting about a book that they've never heard of ... 1000 words come easily and well when you have something to say."

And here, Columbia MFA student Lincoln Michel reminds the applicant to pay attention to the kinds of classes offered at his school--another key to crafting a better essay: "Unlike some other programs that only ask you to take a handful of classes, Columbia requires more seminars and craft classes so maybe wants to look closer at how students can contribute to them."

Welcome to Dueling Comments, where I print my favorite comments that I've spotted in publishing blogs. There are some smart people lurking in comment sections, so I scrounge around the Internets to find the crazy, the useful, and the crazy-useful wisdom that they leave behind.

In case you were sleeping in a cave this morning, The New Yorker published a satirical cover that managed to make both Barack Obama and John McCain upset.

Journalist Michael Scherer reminds us to look back at the Supreme Court's landmark opinion about cartoon art, protecting satirical cartoons everywhere, from Hustler magazine to more highbrow publications--a good legal decision for all writers and artists to re-read every few years. Check it out here.

Over at The New York Observer, Leon Neyfakh pulls back the curtain to reveal the once-nameless reviewers who create the blurb-o-rific reviews at Publisher's Weekly. Dig it:

"With this box, a little bit of PW tradition went to its grave, and the mystique of that booming PW voice, once so objective and authoritative, fractured and finally shattered by the 80-something names printed there in red ink, each referring to an individual, a person somewhere who read a book and wrote a review of it. Who are these individuals? Enthusiasts, mainly. Schoolteachers, professors, stay-at-home moms, authors. It takes all kinds."

Both Mike Scalise and Gordon Hurd linked to that inspiring clip of Ira Glass you see up top. If you ever feel sad about your own work, just watch that clip.

It's time to read some stories out-loud. 

Publishing Spot alum Susan Henderson alerts us to an upcoming short-short story reading this weekend, tipping us off to a great radio reading series as well. And, lo and behold, this reading series is looking for submissions from writers around the country. Check it out:

"I’ll be reading at the KGB bar in NYC on Saturday, July 12th at 7pm. This is for the kick-off of the new NPR show, Dimestories. There will be a whole host of amazing authors reading, so get there early or you’ll be standing-only. For those of you following the saga of me growing out my bangs, you may note that, at this reading, my hair will be in its Jackson Browne stage."

If, like me, you want to read in that 3-minute story series Dime Stories, you should follow this link. But don't leave home without studying some of my collected advice on reading your stories out-loud.

Novelist DeLauné Michel showed us How To Read Your Novel Out Loud

and memoirist Rachel Shukert explained How A Poetry Reading Can Save Your Life

and Felicia Sullivan showed You How To Combat Writing Anxieties.

Investigative journalists are ignoring information goldmines on the web--literally millions of government databases go unexamined by the press every year.

Over at Idea Lab, programmer and journalist Ryan Mark is exploring how a new generation of journalists are figuring out how to explore web-based public records. Check out this list of pioneers:

"The folks at Everyblock deal with these problems on a regular basis. Everyblock, along with other interested organizations have put together the 8 Principles of Open Government Data. Organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, and programs such as Sunshine Week are trying to bring more attention to government transparency, and doing it in a web-friendly way."

If you want more examples of inspiring database investigation, check out how Wired magazine spent six months checking 120 million MySpace-users against public sex offender registries. They found 700 matches in the long, innovative detective job. Crime bloggers like Steve Huff have been doing similar research for years.

Over at the Sunlight Foundation, they are experimenting with new ways for citizen-journalists to help sift through awe-inspiring piles of information. Jay Rosen has written a great essay about this project.