On Friday, Slate.com published a fantastic piece by Chad Harbach titled “MFA v. NYC : America now has two distinct literary cultures. Which one will last?”
The question he should have asked was “Which one can last?” because the MFA culture he describes clearly exhibits characteristics of the same sort of inadvertant pyramid scheme I have already described in regard to the consumerization of writing.
Today is the birthday of Charles Scribner, personal editor of author Ernest Hemingway, whose last name I heartlessly employ as a euphemism for booze sipped while writing.
Now, this might seem the perfect occasion to combine the literary agent links with the editor/publisher links like I threatened promised hinted I might do, last week.
But, no! You shall have your literary agent links, separate and per the usual schedule, and you shall like it!
First of all, let me do a favor for Jessica at BookEnds LLC, and literary agents everywhere, by reminding all of you prospective authors out there that a “novel” is a fictional narrative longer than 50,000 words. There is no need to say “fiction novel” and no reason to say “non-fiction novel.”
And now, let’s go on to the links! Continue reading
Today, as I pound out some more pages for “The Crow and the Kinnebeck,”* I just want to throw out a blog entry chock full of agent and author advice.
For example:
Rather than merely jumping on the NaNoWrimo IntNoWaMo bandwagon, or impotently griping about its drag on the business and art of writing, I decided to conduct a more useful and effective exercise during November: composing a carefully written short story in the same world as The Ligan of the Disomus.
This stream of activity had several inspirational tributaries.
First: considering how Ligan ends (sorry, no spoiler for those who weren’t among the first-readers) I wanted to create a venue for “un-mysteries” preceding the Reider Case, fantasy-suspense stories that are also set in Lemaigne with the Observer as narrator.
The working title of this short story is The Crow and the Kinnebeck, but if I do end up writing more short stories of this type I will probably title the entire anthology The Lemaigne Tales : An Observer’s Casebook from the Years 285 – 295 of the Republics.
Second: a character who isn’t outlined to show up until the third novel in the series — a 6’8″ Arborstone backwoodsman named Wm. Ochsard whom the Api Men call “Welkos” the Boar — kept throwing attitude (and dialogue) in my direction, refusing to be patient for his introduction. Once I decided to write a short story, he planted a giant deerskin boot in the middle of it and refused to budge.
And, once the story comes out, you’ll see that he is not a man to take “wait a bit” for an answer.
Third: my attempts to write an essay about my writerly vision in creating the Observer’s world were coming off clumsy and biographical. And, no I do not mean auto-biographical. The scraps were beginning to sound like someone else writing about my writing years after my death. There was a “this is what Bob Dole stands for” sense of weird self-reference that was throwing off my game.
So, unhappy with the exposition, I found myself slipping the vision underneath Ochsard’s story of murder and revenge, embedding the clues, hints, nudges, and winks in the language itself so that primarily other writers, bookish types, and critics would notice.
So, November is my Personal Short Story Writing Month. Current wordcount? Only two thousand; pretty meager by NaNoWriMo standards.
Current progress? Plot outlined, psychological and philosophical conflicts identified, eight sections defined by imagery and event, major character interactions popping like corn in a hoose kettle, action sequences choreographed in draft, organizing theme and symbolism nearly complete, and the Observer grumpily plodding through the ramblings and rowdiness of Lemaigne’s corrupted denizens.
Ok, so maybe “wrath” is a strong word to describe JK Evanczuk’s five-point refutation of Roth’s assertion that the novel would end up a cult item within a quarter century, but I was glad to see someone take on the positive arguments in favor of novel survival. (I satisfied myself with picking apart Roth’s logic.)
Thanks to Dystel & Goderich Literary Management for pointing me to Evanczuk’s blog.
