I just read a wonderful piece in The Literary Review that says, in the context of a review of a new book about Jane Austen: "In 1797, Thomas Cadell made one of …
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Do You Book Blog? or The Book Blog Roundup
Do you blog about books? Or have a favorite book blog you follow? As the paperback of The Wednesday Sisters prepares to launch, I've been thinking about what a …
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Chekhov on Failure and Persistence
"...you must at once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don't let that concern you. It's your duty to go on working steadily day by …
On Slush Piles and Finding Agents
This photo of the decidedly undaunting St. Martin's slush pile (the bottom shelf), which Frances Dinklespiel posted about on her wonderful blog, Ghost Word, got …
A Self-Publishing Success Story or Three, with a Caveat
At the risk of encouraging folks to head for self-publishing, I found this story on the internet birth of Still Alice interesting. So I poked around a little, …
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A Twitter Book Club?
How does one discuss a book in 140 characters or less? I just came across an announcement of a publisher establishing a Twitter Book Club to help spread the …
Book Sales
I came across an article this morning about Borders financial difficulties in the Detroit Free Press, a newspaper that is struggling, too. It got me thinking …
Open Veins
Are personal essays inherently solipsistic? I'd like to take credit for that perfect word choice, but the credit belongs to my writer-friend, Leslie Berlin, …
My Two Minutes on Radio: Writing for Sound
There’s nothing like reading on radio to make you focus on how your writing sounds. I spent some time at the KQED studios Tuesday afternoon, recording an essay …
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The Secret: You sit down and you start and that's it.
I came across this interview with Elmore Leonard today. It's old - from 1996 - but I'd never seen it. My favorite lines: "I am what you call an overnight …
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