Personal Essays: Things To Think About Before You Write

This post at the mbToolbox is intended to encourage you sign up for Christopher Frizelle's Seattle course on writing personal essays, but no one says you can't benefit from the advice shared in the process. Check out the questions you should ask yourself, starting with "Am I ready to write about this?".

Call for Proposals: The Feminist Press

As part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation, the Feminist Press is looking for "new ways to get girls and young women interested in science. While there are many library resources featuring biographies of women scientists that are suitable for school reports, these are rarely the books that girls seek out themselves to read for pleasure." The Press wants books about science "that girls really want to read."

For starters, the Press is requesting proposals on specific topics, including "scientific detective stories based on the life, research, and discoveries of real women scientists"; "stories featuring real young women--aspiring gymnasts, ice skaters, actors, dancers--using a knowledge of science to help them become reall good at what they do"; "imaginative new collaborations between Manga writers and artists to create adventures about girls who use real science to accomplish their goals."

But they're open to other ideas. "If you are a writer and have an idea afor a book or series of books that is guaranteed to get girls excited about science, we want to hear from you."

Check the announcement for more information and formatting/submission instructions.

Deadline: October 31, 2006.

Chosen proposals will receive standard contracts.

(via Rebecca Skloot at Critical Mass)

Submissions Sought

echolocation, a journal based at the University of Toronto, is looking for "poetry, prose poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction and interviews with writers." Unpublished work only. No simultaneous submissions.

"Pay for the Winter 2007 issue is $10/page" (my guess would be that's Canadian dollars, folks).

This (print) journal accepts only electronic submissions. "We accept submissions year-round; however, the deadline for our Winter 2007 publication is November 10th, 2006."

Check the Web site for more information.

(via placesforwriters.com)

Weekend Reading

This weekend I read a very intriguing piece by Julia Glass from the August 21 Publishers Weekly. This cover story, "In the Dust that Refuses to Settle: Writing Fiction After 9/11," discusses novel-writing as it relates to writing "about" 9/11.

I haven't tackled a novel on this subject, but I did write a number of short stories, beginning soon after the attacks, that in some way reflected the event. At the time I was an MFA student, and some of the reactions my classmates offered--basically, that it was "too soon" to be writing about this--really irked me. It didn't help when the instructor chose to stay silent, either.

So you can imagine how this section of Glass's essay resonated for me:

Lurking behind the notion that novelists have jumped the gun is the illusion that the dust of 9/11 will settle anytime soon; that we will, at some point in the near future, stand at a lofty peak looking down at that day as if it were a museum diorama. That's a genre called historical fiction, which no author writing today will be able to render about this event. Historical fiction is narrative set in a time predating the author's own memory, beyond the reach of conscious, personal experience. To reflect on our own times is something else entirely, and of equal value. When we write about a shared catastrophe whose pain is still raw the effect is sometimes that much more powerful. Was Going After Cacciato written too soon after the Vietnam War? The Normal Heart too soon after the beginning of the AIDS epidemic? All Quiet on the Western Front a premature creation? What of Mrs. Miniver, William Wyler's 1942 film about World War II? How about Suite Francaise?

Storytellers who dramatize their own era embrace its most resounding moments, moments when the spiritual compass by which we live (and write) has spun out of alignment. Realigning that compass, searching for a new magnetic north, is some of the best work fiction writers do. We seize something that everyone around us has taken for granted and, whether tenderly or violently, ironically or tragically, we upend it, dissect or shatter it. We write not about you or them or then. We write about us; we write about now. Reader, we say, the view has changed; let me show you how.

Presidential Reading

You may already have heard that President Bush's summer reading included Albert Camus's The Stranger. Poets & Writers tells us about some of the other titles on his recent list online.

Wonder if the President would now enjoy my review essay on Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, in the Winter-Spring 2006 Chattahoochee Review.

That piece is only available in print, but I'll give you (and the President, of course) a peek here into the first several paragraphs:

Albert Camus entered my life in 1986, when I was a high school junior assigned to read The Stranger in French IV class. As a college sophomore studying Modern European History and Literature a few years later I read The Plague. And our relationship could have ended there. That's about as much Camus as most Americans will ever read.

But Camus, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 (he was then 43 years old) and died in an automobile crash three years later was, as I learned during my junior spring semester in Paris, much more than a mere novelist. He was a journalist, too.

And he was a journalist in difficult times, including the moment of German occupation. In fact, it was en pleine occupation that Camus became editor-in-chief of Combat, a resistance newspaper published clandestinely and irregularly until the liberation in the summer of 1944. This translation of Camus at Combat, which was originally produced in France in 2002, collects 165 of his Combat editorials and articles, some attributed to him from Combat's clandestine phasae, but most dating from the post-liberation and early postwar period.

It is a tremendous book. And it is significant not only for those, like me, with longstanding intellectual and emotional attachments to the author and the original texts (that junior spring I chose the postwar purges of French writers and journalists as my senior honors thesis topic; before I left France that summer I spent many hours in the French National Library, reading Camus' many Combat editorials on the subject on microfilm), but for anyone interested in history, politics, or journalism.

And Yet Another No-Cost Contest!

Hurry up and pay attention to this one (the information will only be posted on the public part of the WritersMarket.com Web site until September 14).

Writer's Market is running a Freelance Writing Success Stories Contest. They're looking for true, first-person success stories "on some aspect of freelance writing success, whether it's your first byline, the crazy things you went through to secure a book quote, or how you were able to get exclusive access to an interview subject."

Prizes include a $250 contract to have the story published in the 2008 Writer's Market (first place); a $150 contract to have the story published in the 2008 Writer's Market (second place); and a $100 contract to have the story published in the 2008 Writer's Market (third place).

Submission deadline (submit via e-mail to writersmarket(at)fwpubs(dot)com): December 1, 2006. There's NO ENTRY FEE.

Unpublished stories only, says Writer's Market editor Robert Lee Brewer (via e-mail).

Again, if you want to read the official announcement online (and you're not a Writer's Market subscriber) visit WritersMarket.com by September 14 (scroll down the page).

Sands Hall's "Checklist for a Scene"

Our September Practicing Writer newsletter will go out this weekend, and I'm thrilled that it will feature an interview with author Sands Hall, whose work includes the best-selling novel Catching Heaven and the play Fair Use. Sands is an experienced writing instructor and freelance editor (I've had the privilege of working with her in both capacities) and she has recently published an excellent book for writers, Tools of the Writer's Craft.

You'll hear much more about the book (and about Sands) in the newsletter, but in the meantime, Sands has been gracious enough to allow me to reprint one of the text's exercises, the elements in her "Checklist for a Scene":

* Where is the scene set? Does the setting convey some information about at least one of the characters?

* What activity might at least one character be engaged in that might reveal to the reader something specific about them?

* What objects, or "props," might your characters handle? Are these items the most specific, most "telling" objects available in the setting or by the activity? Could they be interpreted on metaphoric or symbolic levels?

* What do each of the characters in the scene want? What is in the way of getting what they want?

* Explore the idea of expressing your characters' emotional states by how they move about the space, engage in the activity, use the objects.

* Employ dialogue wisely. Make sure each character speaks distinctly--by which I mean uniquely--and that what they say lets the reader know something specific. Avoid adverbs in your attributions; use action and gesture to convey tone of voice and attitude.

* What is the source of light in the setting? Are there sounds? Aromas? Use sensory perceptions as a way to reveal point of view and setting.

* At the same time, remember that each detail needs to contribute something, needs to reveal something about character or objective/obstacle (plot) or theme.

(c) Copyright Sands Hall. Reprinted by permission.

New Work Online

This week I have two new pieces available online, and both mean a lot to me.

"Rio, 1946" is a piece of (very) short fiction. It's actually an excerpt from my novel manuscript, The Haguenauer Line. It began as an overnight exercise (more years ago than I care to reveal!) in an Iowa Summer Writing Festival class taught by Sands Hall (expect to hear more about Sands here at the blog and in our next newsletter very shortly).

It's especially significant that "Rio, 1946" appears online just now. The piece is rooted in my family history: exactly 60 years ago--in August 1946--my paternal grandmother's parents, who had fled Nazi Germany for Brazil in 1940, sailed from Rio toward New York. My great-grandfather, who in a number of ways inspired my novel's character of Max Haguenauer, died at the Marine Hospital on Ellis Island on September 1, but my great-grandmother was able to spend the next 25 years reunited with her daughter (my grandma) and became an important part of my dad's life.

Here's the link to "Rio, 1946."

Second, JBooks.com has published another of my reviews. You'll find my discussion of Walter Laqueur's The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism (Oxford UP, 2006) here.

Online Literary Journal Becomes Paying Market

Here's a bit of news I picked up over at Duotrope's Digest: The King's English, an international online literary journal publishing novellae, personal essays, book reviews, and poetry, will begin paying its authors as of its Fall 2006 issue. Pay rates will be $20/story or essay, $10/review, and $10/poem (maximum of $20/poet per issue). Check the journal's Web site for more information.

Science Writer Sought (Toronto; part-time)

The National Cancer Institute of Canada (Toronto) is looking for a part-time writer (one-year contract). Check out the full job listing at Jeff Gaulin's Journalism Job Board. Application deadline: September 8, 2006.

They Like Us! They Really Like Us!

Imagine how delighted and proud I was to discover this write-up in the "CyberSurfing" section of the current Whidbey Island Writers Association newsletter:

The Practicing Writer - this is one of my essential writing resources that just happens to be in digital format. Erika Dreifus is a prolific writer of e-books for writers, including "Writers' Markets," the "Guide to No-Cost Literary Contests and Competitions," the "Primer on Low-Residency MFA Programs," and directories of paying short story markets, paying poetry markets, paying essay markets, and paying markets for book reviewers. In early 2004 Erika Dreifus launched a free monthly e-newsletter, The Practicing Writer. Each issue includes an article on an aspect of the craft and/or business—the practice—of writing. Every issue also features:

* a highlighted online resource to assist you with your writing practice
* announcements for upcoming contests and similar opportunities
* a "Submission Alerts!!!" section, where Erika keeps subscribers posted about calls from literary journals and nuances in editorial calendars
* highlights from our Practicing Writing blog
* a "Conferences and Events" section

This newsletter contains an amazing array of free and low-fee writing competitions every month. To subscribe just send a blank e-mail to [practicing-writer-subscribe(at)yahoogroups(dot)com]. You can access Erika’s blog directly at http://practicing-writing.blogspot.com.

Thank you so much! (By the way, our next newsletter should be out within a week.)

"How to Write a First Person Essay"

As you might have gleaned from some of the "other links" listed to the right ("Intellectual Affairs" and "Ms. Mentor," for instance), I have an abiding interest in and affection for good writing--including humorous writing--about academia. So I laughed out loud a few times while reading Miriam Elizabeth Burstein's "How to Write a First Person Essay" in the Chronicle of Higher Education's Careers section. Warning: you have to know the Careers section's "First Person" essays (which I also tend to like a lot) to get the full benefit.

Great Beginnings

Having trouble starting your story or novel? For inspiration, check out this list of 100 Best First Lines from Novels, courtesy of the American Book Review. (Hint: the first five come from Melville, Austen, Pynchon, Garcia Marquez, and Nabokov.)

New Magazine for Single Mothers (Pays: $150-$1,000)

Find out about a new magazine specifically for single women raising their families. Bacon's The Navigator recently profiled SM: The Magazine for Single Mothers, with input from publisher Crystal Jennings. After you read the article check out the freelance writers' guidelines at the magazine's Web site.

L'Affaire Grass

When I want to find reliable information about something literary happening outside the United States, one of the first places I check is the Literary Saloon (linked to the right). So as I follow the developing Gunter Grass story, that's one of the sites I keep checking. To catch up, click here.

No-Cost Contest: Canadian Writers Collective

You don't have to be Canadian to enter this contest, which seeks Canadian travel stories, defined as stories that feature a trip, "taken, not taken imagined--to/from/between places in Canada--real, surreal, unreal." Keep your story under 1000 words. First prize: $50 (Canadian dollars, presumably). Submit via e-mail by September 30, 2006. There's no entry fee. Full guidelines/submission instructions here.

(via places for writers)

MFA Material

Whether you're a potential MFA student, current matriculant, graduate, or instructor, you'll likely be interested in Gianmarc Manzione's essay, "MFA: What the Skeptics Don't Want You to Know." Manzione is a 2004 poetry graduate of The New School's program.

Group M35 Magazine (Pays: $100-$500)

I discovered Group M35's new magazine through the Fund for Women Artists' latest Theatre Funding newsletter. Launching in October 2006, the monthly online magazine will mix high-quality documentary photographs with poetry, fiction, documentary, dialogue, essays, lyrics, journalism, non-fiction, and more.

Right now you'll find a series of images posted at the Web site; if interested, you should write in response to a selection of one to three of the ten photographs. If you'd like to collaborate with one of the Group M35 photographers on a Features piece (you'd work with the photographer to create something from scratch), you may submit a general writing sample from your portfolio.

Before spreading the word about the magazine I wanted to learn a little more about it. Group M35's Lisa Gilsdorf graciously answered my inquiry via e-mail:

Writers whose submitted pieces are used in the magazine will receive somewhere between $100 and $500 dollars for the month the issue runs on our site. After that month has ended, issues will still be available on the site in our back-issues archive. Writers selected to work directly with a photographer on a new piece for the Features section will be paid per word, and this rate will depend on experience and the depth of the feature. You may also want to mention to your readers that each month we will include one or two series, which basically means extended features (broken up into two to five issues). These will usually be essays and short-term documentary pieces. Series writers will be paid per word as well. Eventually there will be a section in several foreign languages (with an available English translation), so any of your writers fluent in another language are encouraged to submit in both English and another language.

This magazine looks like an intriguing endeavor; I'll be following its development with interest.

No-Cost Essay Contest: Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair magazine has announced the topic of its latest essay contest: "What is reality to Americans today? And did we ever have a grasp of it?"

Essays, which must be no longer than 1,500 words (excluding title and any notes or bibliography), must be received by midnight E.D.T. on September 30, 2006. The competition is open to legal residents (18 years of age or older) of one of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia at the time of entry. Essays may be co-authored by two authors.

There is no entry fee.

According to the announcement, there will be "one grand prize of $15,000, a trip to Donnini, Italy, including economy-class airfare and six nights of accommodation at the Santa Maddalena writers' colony, and a Montblanc Meisterstuck 149 fountain pen." Second prize is $5,000 and a Montblanc Boheme fountain pen. Third prize is $1,000 and a Montblanc StarWalker Fine Liner. The grand-prize-winning essay will be published at www.vanityfair.com. "Grand-prize winner(s) may be required to sign Vanity Fair's standard author contract assigning the magazine all worldwide copyright rights to the essay."

For full information and submission instructions, visit vanityfair.com.

Two More No-Cost Contests

Two recent no-cost contest discoveries via CRWROPPS:

1) The Montana Festival of the Book invites submissions for its Happy Tales Literary Contest. From the guidelines: "Take any literary work with a sad, disturbing, or negative ending and supply a happy, affirmative, uplifting, humorous ending. The new ending must more or less parody the idiom, style, atmosphere, and so on, of the original." Prize includes $200 cash, the "Nahum Tate Cup," and possible reading at a public session of the Montana Festival of the Book, September 28-30, 2006, in Missoula, MT. "Winning entries will be weblished at the Festival website or published in other media." Deadline: September 18, 2006.

2) Co-sponsored by Green Mountain Power and Vermont Life, the Ralph Nading Hill, Jr. Literay Contest is open to any student or resident of Vermont. From the guidelines: "Submit your thoughts on 'Vermont, Its People, The Place, Its History, or Its Values' as an essay, short story, play or poem. Your entry must be 3,000 words or less." Unpublished work only. Prize includes $1,500 award. Deadline: November 15 (annual).

Women's Travel Misadventures Anthology Seeks Submissions (Pays: $100)

Jen Leo of WrittenRoad.com is looking for submissions for another Travelers' Tales book. Building on the success of Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures, she has posted a call for that book's sequel: More Sand in My Bra. Click here to read Jen's post at WrittenRoad.com, which includes a link to the Travelers' Tales guidelines. Note that the deadline is coming up pretty soon (August 31 or September 1, depending on the source you check).

Blog Break

Taking a bit of a breather for a few days. Check back around August 11 for new posts, and in the meantime enjoy our archives and links.

An Ethical Question

I've been mulling over this Ha'aretz article for awhile. It describes the resignation of a group of Israeli journalists from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). According to the article, their resignation followed the IFJ's general secretary's refusal to "retract his condemnation of Israel's bombing of Hezbollah's Al-Manar television station in Beirut."

So here's my question: what would you do if a leader of a professional writers' organization to which you belonged wrote, verbalized in speech, or otherwise presented, in his or her role as leader of that organization, outright biased political statements--with which you disagreed? Have you faced this kind of situation in the past? How have you responded/acted, if at all?

New Editorial Calendars for Children's Magazines

My niece's third birthday is coming up, and since I've already gifted her with her first "bookcase" and plenty of books I'm turning this time to...a magazine subscription. So I've been perusing plenty of children's magazines online and, at the same time, noting submission guidelines. Some of the magazines from Carus Publishing--including Calliope, Dig, Faces, and Odyssey--have recently updated their editorial calendars and theme lists. These are all paying markets, so if you're interested in writing for children, check them out.

Editorial Internship (Calgary: Pays $1,000/month)

Up! Magazine, the in-flight publication of WestJet airlines, seeks an "engaging writer and tenacious fact-checker interested in bringing the magic of a travel tale to various multi-media platforms" for an editorial internship. "A successful candidate will have a post-secondary education in journalism or a related field and at least a year of experience in travel and tourism media. You write, edit and proofread effectively and have great communication skills. Your skill set includes fluency in Microsoft Office, Adobe InDesign, various Apple suites, including GarageBand and online content management software."

Application deadline: August 16, 2006.

To read the full announcement, check Jeff Gaulin's Job Board.

A Conversation with Kevin Haworth

One pleasure of the online world is the seemingly endless opportunity it provides to "meet" other writers and learn about their excellent work. Not long ago I made the virtual acquaintance of Kevin Haworth, who recently won the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers for his debut novel, The Discontinuity of Small Things (Quality Words in Print, 2005). For those who aren't familiar with this major award, it's administered by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Past winners include Nathan Englander, Simone Zelitch, Peter Orner, Gary Shteyngart, Lara Vapnyar, and Nancy Reisman.

And for those who aren't familiar with Haworth's novel, it's a remarkable read. Set primarily in Denmark during World War II, the novel follows several seemingly unrelated characters as their lives change--little by little--as a series of "small things" gradually takes place under Denmark's occupation by Nazi Germany. Although the novel itself is discontinuous (following disparate characters and shifting in time; I don't always appreciate such nonlinearity), in this case it all works, and Haworth skillfully weaves the various threads together. This is an affecting and effective novel; it lingers long after the last page.

Born in Brooklyn in 1971, Kevin Haworth spent most of his childhood in Summitville, NY. He graduated with honors from Vassar College in 1992; it was at Vassar that he began writing fiction, studying with novelist Thomas Mallon. After graduation, he moved to Israel to participate in Sherut La'am (Service to the People), a year-long volunteer program.

In 1995 Haworth received a teaching fellowship to Arizona State University, where he earned an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing. While there, he taught fiction workshops and published his first story, "The Story of Jonah and the Whale," which won the Permafrost Fiction Prize. (His second published story, "The Promised Land," won the David Dornstein Memorial Creative Writing Contest in 1998.) He also began work on his novel, The Discontinuity of Small Things.

In 1997 Haworth moved to Philadelphia, where his wife was attending rabbinical school. During two month-long residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, in 1999 and in 2001, Haworth worked as a carpenter and wrote long sections of his novel. He currently lives in Athens, Ohio, and teaches writing and literature at Ohio University. He is married to Rabbi Danielle Leshaw and has two children. Recently he responded to a series of my questions:

Erika Dreifus: Kevin, I've already congratulated you in our correspondence, but allow me to publicly acknowledge a recent honor--your receipt of the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers for your debut novel, The Discontinuity of Small Things. How did you learn about this competition, and how did your novel come to be submitted for consideration?

Kevin Haworth: Full credit goes to my editor, Holly Gruber, who is very attentive to award competitions and submitted the book on my behalf. When you publish with a small press, literary prizes are an important way to get noticed. Of course, winning a major award is the result that everyone hopes for--but even smaller prizes can generate really welcome publicity.

ED: How did you find out you'd won the award? What was your reaction? What's changed for you since the award was announced?

KH: There's an instant legitimacy that comes with winning a national literary prize. Here at Ohio University, it has certainly attracted some notice and I hope that will develop on a larger scale as the news spreads. But most importantly, it lends that elusive concept--confidence--that might sustain a writer through the sine curve of a long career. As for how I heard--Holly, my editor, buried it in the back end of a phone call for maximum dramatic effect. I made her say it three times before I would let her get off the phone.

ED: Tell us how you came to write The Discontinuity of Small Things.

KH: It came directly out of my MFA program. In a class taught by the novelist Melissa Pritchard, we were 'encouraged'--let's say forced--to come up with a different idea for a novel each week, complete with synopsis and three-page sample. To me, this is a story about how productive waste can be for a writer. Ten weeks/ten ideas. Nine went nowhere. One led to this.

ED: This is an historical novel, set primarily in Denmark during World War II. Tell us a little about your research process.

KH: I used a number of different methods, but photographs were probably the most important. A good photograph provides you with wonderful details and an ambiguous narrative. That is a useful starting point for a writer. It supplies you with raw material, some tension, and lots of room to work. Many of the moments in the book emerged from photographs, both period ones and others that my wife took when we traveled to Denmark and Sweden to research the book about halfway through the writing process.

I also used historical accounts and discussions with people I met in Denmark, but less than one might think. For one thing, I really don't like talking to strangers. I'm just too shy for it. Second, when you write an historical novel, you really have to be wary of the history. Georg Lukacs writes in The Historical Novel, a classic book of criticism on the subject, that important events can exert an unhealthy gravity over your work. You need to be entirely familiar with the history and context, and then you need to be willing to depart from it. Only then can you write a book that is surprising.

ED: This novel was published by Quality Words in Print. Tell us how the "match" between you and your novel and the publisher developed.

KH: I liked QWIP's Web site. What I mean is: the face that QWIP presents to the world is quiet and lovely. I suspected those qualities would translate to the way that the press approached its books. So I sent some sample pages. The relationship developed from there. There was certainly no guarantee that they would appreciate the book--like everyone else, QWIP is awash in submissions--but I recognized an aesthetic kinship, and that helped. There are so many books in the world, and so many styles, that looking for a 'match,' as you say, does increase the chances of success.

ED: I read in the Cleveland Jewish News that you spent eight years working on this novel. How did you sustain momentum (and interest!) over all that time? What were some of the high (and low) points?

KH: There's no need for parentheses. The low points came regularly and with quite a bit of noise. At times, the more I wrote the harder it became. All those words--and I still didn't know if it would ever come together. When I first started sending the book out, it was almost out of desperation--to force the book into a clearer stage of success or failure.

Two elements sustained me during that time. One, I was convinced that the book mattered. Much of that is related to the inherent importance of the Holocaust and the need to explore it. But I think every writer needs to believe that there is something *big* about the story he or she is struggling to tell.

Second, I felt I had stumbled upon a unique stylistic approach. I often approached it in a detached way, like a science experiment. Let's push the style, keep changing the variables, and see what happens. I love revision, the constant pursuit of a sentence that is slightly better than the previous version. I'm still doing it, by the way. You should see how many times I've rewritten this interview.

In the long run, it's interesting how quickly one's perspective can change. I was starting to feel quite behind the curve. (You're 34! No book yet?) Now everyone's telling me I'm a young writer again.

ED: The Goldberg Prize includes, in addition to a cash award, a month's residency at the Ledig House International Writers' Colony. You've spent some time in artist communities before. How did your past residency experience(s) contribute to your work on this novel, and what are you planning to work on while you're at Ledig House?

KH: My two residencies at the Vermont Studio Center were absolutely necessary. For me, it comes down to mental and physical space. I re-made my studio in Vermont in the image of my novel--at one point, I copied nearly the whole book onto index cards and put them up on the wall. I was influenced by the visual artists who make up the majority of residents at VSC; unlike writers, they can see their whole work at once, look at it from different angles, see how individual brushstrokes affect the whole. So I did that. That was a key step in moving from a collection of sentences to a cohesive book.

The mental space is just as valuable. Separated from your everyday life, you simply spend more time with your work. Problems that seemed insurmountable at nine in the morning can be solved at five in the afternoon, when you're just walking around and thinking.

ED: Anything else you want to tell us? (reading dates, future projects, conferences, etc.)

KH: I'm still putting together my fall schedule, but it looks like it will include some visits to universities, a couple of events on behalf of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and some appearances at Jewish book fairs. Of course, if your readers have any terrific ideas, I'd be glad to hear them. [Editor's Note: Kevin will also be attending Jewish Book Week in London in February 2007.]

Like many writers, I'm reluctant to talk about my work-in-progress. But the book, now published, is an object. It has its own life, and I really enjoy narrating the story of that life.

ED: Thank you, Kevin!

(c) Copyright 2006 by Erika Dreifus

Note: You can find/learn more about Kevin Haworth's award-winning novel here. And because this is an ethical issue discussed on several blogs lately, please know that there is NO financial benefit to The Practicing Writer for any purchase through that link.

(Adapted from a version published in The Practicing Writer, August 2006)

Helpful Hint on Freelance Job Listings

Learned something helpful from the MediaBistro.com discussion boards this morning: JournalismJobs.com now posts freelance writing opportunities apart from its "regular" job listings (I was wondering what had happened--seemed to me JournalismJobs had very few freelance listings lately). Find the calls for freelancers here.