The Wednesday Web Browser

Philip Graham shares writing lessons learned from his cab-driving days.
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Over on my other blog, My Machberet ("machberet" is the Hebrew word for "notebook"), Barbara Krasner provides a generous guest post/conference dispatch re: writing Jewish-themed children's books.
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Here's a peek into the archives of John Updike (made me nostalgic for doing research in Houghton Library).
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According to the editor whom Lisa Romeo cites, I must be an "old writer," indeed. What about you?

Friday Find: Dispatch from Iowa City, A Guest Post by Ronald H. Lands, M.D., M.F.A.

Ron Lands has to be one of the most impressive (and modest) people I met in my M.F.A. program. So when I learned that Ron - who earned an M.D. well before he tackled the M.F.A. - was attending a two-day event on "The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine" at the University of Iowa's Carver College at April's end, I was eager to request a guest post. Ever generous, Ron agreed. Here's his dispatch from the conference (you can learn more about this event, and check out the online archive, here).

“The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine"
University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine
April 28-April 30, 2010

by Ron Lands

Medicine and literature often share the same topics; life and death, suffering and loss and everything in between. As they have every year since 2006, medical students, physicians, nurses, patients, and caregivers convened in a city known for its great writers, to collaborate regarding the power of writing in making sense of these grand themes and to demonstrate that the practice of medicine is an interpretive work.

A cardiologist put a human face on illness by blending his profession with his hobbies, interpreting the patient’s heart pathology by ultrasound then photographing the person in their home and writing poetry about the experience. An English professor wrote a play based on her personal experience with cancer and an actor interpreted and performed this dramatic work. Academicians shared tools and techniques to empower other educators to exploit the power of writing to cause reflection and nurture empathy in their students. Researchers presented data hoping to identify a physiologic link between writing and stress reduction in caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients. A literary scholar turned physician offered a powerful examination of metaphor in the language of pain. A leukemia patient and her hematologist shared their five-year journey from diagnosis to a durable and sustained remission, using essay, memoir and colored pencil sketches drawn during the trauma of her bone marrow transplant.

Flannery O’Connor, one of many great writers associated with Iowa City through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, said, “I write to find out what I know.” “The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine,” further demonstrates the clarifying effect that reading, writing and reflection can bring to the chaos of illness for those who suffer and those who witness the suffering.

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Ronald H. Lands teaches in the Department of Medicine at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus, where he practices and teaches Internal Medicine, Hematology and Palliative Care. His fiction has appeared in New Millennium Writings, descant, Washington Square, and many others. He has published essays from the intersection of writing and medicine in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Geriatric Society, and the Journal of Palliative Medicine. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

A Poem About a Poet by Anne Whitehouse

I have a superb offering for you today: a poem by Anne Whitehouse. This poem is included in Anne's new poetry collection, Blessings and Curses (Poetic Matrix Press). And, appropriately for this blog's purposes, it's a poem inspired by a writing workshop. My deep thanks to Anne for the gift of permission to republish this piece.


CURSE IX

He was not good or kind,
but he was memorable.
He was the Poet,
and we the disciples
each week seeking
the benefit of his insight
as we sat around the table
listening politely
while he free-associated,
his random thoughts
drifting into aperçus
delivered in a high-pitched
nasal voice, the ash
hanging off his cigarette
until it dropped by itself.

At the interview
for admission to the class
I was in awe of him.
“These are yours?” he asked,
indicating my Fogg Poems.
In suspense I assented.
“Not bad,” he continued,
and paused. “But there are
so many of them.”
He sighed, leafing
through the seven pages
as if they constituted a burden.
“You’re in the class,” he said,
handing them back to me.

Believing he must be right,
I let him influence me.
From that day on
I dared not add another poem,
though possibilities still
occurred to me,
I ignored my ideas
until they went away.
At the time I didn’t know
he was writing his own series
of loosely-titled sonnets
hundreds of them
he would publish
in multiple versions
under two titles.

**

As winter melted into spring,
his mind grew unhinged.
One afternoon in class,
hearing workmen
making a racket
in the room below us,
he flew into a rage
and shouted at them
through the ceiling,
banging his chair
on the floor in retaliation.

Another time I saw him
shuffling across Mass. Ave.
in bedroom slippers
looking lost and dazed.

At his poetry reading at The Advocate,
he could barely speak.
The week before his collapse
he put aside student work
and, ignoring us,
closed his eyes and intoned,
“A bracelet of hair about the bone.”

“A bracelet of hair about the bone,”
he uttered the line again
and again, in a trance,
his voice growing fainter
until at last he grew silent.

We fled, leaving him
clutching his dead cigarette,
the ash scattered on the table,
staring into nothing.

(Bonus: Check out practicing writer John Vanderslice (Creating Van Gogh)'s review of Blessings and Curses for the Santa Fe Writers Project.)

The Wednesday Web Browser

Big congrats to Tayari Jones, whose third novel, The Silver Girl, has been accepted for publication by Algonquin Books.
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Diane Lockward reviews The Working Poet: 75 Exercises and a Poetry Anthology.
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Thanks to Anne-Marie Nichols's article on blog analytics, I'm learning more about you, dear readers!
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Please tune in tomorrow over on My Machberet for a guest post from memoirist Jessica Handler on her recent visit to a Jewish book festival.

Guest Post: Lisa Romeo on Crafting A Contest Winner

As promised, I present to you guest commentary from Lisa Romeo on the craft decisions that went into "43 Lies About My Child," a recent winner in Masha Hamilton's 31 Hours Parents' Intuition Contest. Thank you so much, Lisa, for sharing this with us.

I actually still don't know what to properly call this piece. It's definitely creative nonfiction, and in my mind, a type of personal essay, though the form is unusual. It requires some visual assistance via the regular and italics fonts to distinguish the two voices on the page. Some have called it "fragmented memoir," others a prose poem, and that's fine with me.

About three years ago, an essay I wrote about having a child who clearly had developmental difficulties but for which there was no specific diagnosis, was included in an essay collection and, in an adapted shorter form, in The New York Times.

I had a lot of left over material, including a list of things people had said to me over the years, beginning when my son was a baby and continuing until he was an adolescent. It was, I suppose, "advice" offered in a well-meaning way, but which struck me as judgmental, and infuriated me because I couldn't at the time summon the confidence to reply.

I knew I wanted to write something that addressed these voices that were still in my head, but it didn't seem to fit in to the form of a traditional personal essay. I didn't want to be whiny on the page either. So I played with it as a prose poem for a while, and then as a humor piece; neither really worked, so I put it aside.

Meanwhile, Ann Hood referred me to a nonfiction piece she'd written for Tin House's special issue about lies and is now part of her memoir, Comfort. In the essay, she addressed all the trite and generic things people said to her about grief, in the period after she had lost her young daughter.

I realized something similar could work for me, with some changes. In Ann's piece, she lays out the standard lines, such as, "time heals," and then through short narratives, shows them to all be lies -- how passing time has not eased her pain when she sees spring dresses in Target even a year after the girl's death. She doesn't really talk back to the crowd so much as takes the reader inside the narrator's experience with each "lie."

I wanted to do something less narrative, more satirically "prescriptive" and I began to play with the idea of a parody of the type of articles in parenting magazines – 12 ways to help your shy child. I knew whatever I did had to be voice-driven, really all about three distinct voices: The annoying voice of the nosy outsider; the narrator's I'm-the-Mama-Bear-Don't-Cross-Me voice I knew was inside me somewhere, but had never been in evidence when I needed it; and a third voice which lurks behind – that voice inside every mother's head telling her she knows what's true about her child. Eventually, I put the first two voices directly on the page in opposition to one another, and the third exists more or less in the background.

Originally, there were 81 "lies," then 76, but one of my writing friends pointed out that the piece loses its urgency over the long stretch in such a contrived format. So I trimmed down to 50, but I was still trying to cover every base, every facet of his and my journey over about 12 years.

I submitted it for an essay collection, and the editor rejected it, but gave me excellent advice about improving the pacing, and cutting to the bone so that the piece would really bleed on the page, instead of just hinting at distress. I stopped trying to cover it all, and got more selective about which "lies" to include.

That took me to 43 lies and by then the "advice" proffered, and the narrator's responses – were all shorter and more sharply focused, and much less tactful. I had been trying to protect even the people who had said awful things to me, and was still trying to make the narrator seem nice! Another writer friend who I asked to read it noticed that the best lines were the ones where I was allowing the mother's voice to really lash out.

Finally I gave myself permission to "answer" in the way I never would have in my own skin back then. That's when the piece began to have an edge; it was no longer tentative. I allowed my narrator to be someone who doesn't give a fig what anyone else thinks, which is not necessarily how I am in life. In that sense, maybe there's a bit of fiction at play – the narrator as she wishes she could have been; then again, I suppose that's the creative part of the nonfiction.

After the Retreat: A Guest Post by Chloé Yelena Miller

AROHO Retreat: Digestion
Second of two guest posts by Chloé Yelena Miller

AROHO, pronounced as one word, is the acronym for A Room of Her Own.

Oneness was the unofficial theme of this year’s retreat. A group of 80 or so women gathered in the red desert to share ideas, challenge each other, and form one community.

I wanted to write this blog post at the weeklong retreat. In my creaky bed, I tried to summarize what was happening. But even at the airport returning home, I was overwhelmed.

So I asked AROHO friends on Facebook what their favorite moments were:

Barb Johnson, Gift of Freedom Award Winner and author of More of This World or Maybe Another, wrote, “Rita Dove. Transcendent readings. Wonderful conversations. Dancing. Discovering that hummingbirds chitter.”

Jennifer Mattson, NPR contributor and instructor, added, “Rita Dove, twice. Conversations with Barb Johson, hiking and the Georgia O'Keeffe tours.... and of course late nights with the roomie.”

“Two moments: The first evening, one of the women explained the perseids (she goes somewhere each year to see them), which was a first clue this would be an interesting, informed group. Also, Meredith [Hall]'s exercises for memoir writing” were oral historian Abbie Reese’s favorite memories.

Summer Wood, Gift of Freedom Award Winner and author of Arroyo, shared: “Ellen [McLaughlin]'s phenomenal monologue following Rita [Dove]'s lovely, generous reading. I thought I was going to explode out of my skin.”

I filled up a notebook. I wanted to remember Mary Rose Betton teaching us about reading our work aloud, starting with our natural voice (which can be found by simply saying, “uh huh”). I wanted to remember Rita Dove saying: “After a project, I promise myself to do something completely different. Something that scares me.” On writing for public radio said, Jennifer Mattson said: “Always mumble when you write. Read and write at the same time.” I keep thumbing through the notebook.

Many women arrived planning to write throughout the days. Since I work alone from home, I wanted to meet people and attend classes. I tried not to sit in my room, but rather talk with other writers who were up for conversation.

I mentioned in the previous post that I attended Smith College, an all-women’s school. Perhaps because I'd already experienced being part of a supportive, all-women’s network, I was particularly interested in finding honest critiques of my writing.

Luckily, author Laura Fraser’s workshop on creative nonfiction did just that. She was firm and clear. I’d read her book An Italian Affair before leaving. I knew she was successful in her freelance career. She was candid in class, shared tips with us and encouraged us to be precise. She noted the “one rule.” Every piece, paragraph, and even sentence should have one point. She recommended On Writing Well by William Zinsser, and as I reread the book on the plane, it reverberated with Laura's points and her writing. She helped the students in the class trust each other, ourselves and our writing enough to want it to be as good as possible.

There were moments the setting distracted me from the writing. It turns out that I am as afraid of coyotes’ howling as I am of sleeping in a room with an unlocked door that opens up to the outside. This retreat caught me a little off guard with how rural it was. This Jersey girl needs a tougher skin.

That said, I’ve never been anywhere where the stars shone as brightly as they did at night. I’d also never felt as safe and as challenged as I did there.

As soon as I got back home, I took a long, hot shower and then logged into Facebook to find my new friends. I trust that some of us will be sharing writing for years to come and prompting each other not only to write, but to write well.

Thank you to everyone who worked to organize this wonderful retreat.

Guest Post: Chloé Yelena Miller on Preparing for a Writing Retreat

Please extend a warm welcome to our guest blogger, Chloé Yelena Miller, whom you may remember from a previous post. Today, Chloé shares some thoughts as she approaches a writing retreat. She'll be back with another post once she has returned home. Chloé has poems published or forthcoming in Alimentum Journal, Lumina, Privatephotoreview.com, South Mountain Poets Chapbook, Sink Review and The Cortland Review. Her manuscript, Permission to Stay, was a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. She teaches writing online for Fairleigh Dickinson University and edits Portal Del Sol. She received an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a B.A. from Smith College.

A Women’s Writing Retreat: One Woman’s Treat and Necessity
Chloé Yelena Miller

I have never seen a desert, and I am obsessed with Georgia O’Keeffe. The Writers’ Retreat, hosted by A Room of her Own, adds writing to the mix of a desert landscape and O’Keeffe’s home. What could be better?

I have been in love with O’Keeffe’s work since I first saw an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a child. The landscape that helped to form her art was so different from my own setting: urban New Jersey. I remember sitting cross-legged on the carpet in my parents’ living room looking through her oversized book One Hundred Flowers. This upcoming retreat feels like a homecoming as visual art brings me to a writing space.

A black and white portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe has been pinned over my desk since high school. It has traveled with me from New Jersey to Massachusetts to Italy to New York and finally to Michigan. This year’s retreat’s theme is “My Country is the Whole World” (Virginia Woolf.) Perfect.

We all need more time and space to write. While I am working part time and have been dedicating much of my time to my writing this last year, being surrounded by other writers and attending classes (far from laundry, bills to pay, and other time-
consuming tasks) can only spur my writing, editing of past work, and contemplation of ideas. I truly can’t wait. (On the other hand, there is a pile of procrastination that must get done before I can leave.)

I enjoy the company of forward-thinking, creative women. There are always potential risks to gathering folks around one aspect of themselves, but since we will have two - writing and our gender - in common, we shouldn’t have any problems. I imagine this will be similar to my experience at Smith College. I chose Smith College not because it was an all-women’s school, but because of the type of motivated students it attracted. There is indeed something special about being surrounded by women.

I look forward to attending classes, writing and hopefully talking at length to the other writers. I will be in a workshop led by Laura Fraser, whose book An Italian Affair I recently gobbled up in three evenings. From the memoir, I think she is a woman after my own heart. I have been doing some freelance writing and hope to improve my hand at not only being honest, but including facts in my writing (a puddle-jump from my poetry.) I promise you the same in a blog post when I return.

I hope to return rejuvenated and with a long list of books to read, craft challenges, ideas for future pieces and if I’m lucky, the start to a few new pieces.

Aside from small festivals and short workshops, I haven’t returned to the humble state of student for some time. As a writing teacher, I know how important this is. I was a poetry writing graduate student at Sarah Lawrence College and attended the Western Michigan State University’s program in Prague (where I met our lovely, creative and energized Erika) and was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center. I learned something new in each program.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, as perhaps it might keep me honest), I will be finishing teaching an online course during the retreat. I hope I will have some time every day to log into the class and grade papers as they come in. I’m a wee bit nervous about combining the two activities and doing both well simultaneously. I will also admit that while I can’t wait to see the desert, I am not someone who loves the heat. I will report back about how hot “dry heat” really is.

Writing students must expect as much from the program itself as from the other students. We all have a lot to do to prepare. I’ve been reading works by the authors who will be there, listening to interviews online, and tweaking my own writing for workshops. I’m ready.

Letter from the London Book Fair

I am proud to present a guest post written by Brett Jocelyn (BJ) Epstein, who very recently attended the London Book Fair. Among BJ's latest literary accomplishments is Northern Lights: Translation in the Nordic Countries, a volume she edited containing essays from a conference she organized. To learn more about this wonderful writer-editor-translator, please visit BJ's blog and Web site.

The London Book Fair 2009

by BJ Epstein

Ah, books, books, books. Rows of books, books for sale, authors signing books. Books and more books. That's what the typical bibliophile would excitedly imagine when thinking of a book fair. In fact, although events such as The London Book Fair (LBF) and the Frankfurt Book Fair seem to be about books, they are really about the bottom line.

The LBF is a place where publishers come to show their wares to other publishers, hoping to make foreign sales. People rush around holding notebooks, looking for books they might want to purchase the rights to and then have translated to their own tongue. The major publishers have big stands with lots of small tables where their agents can meet with other agents. An observer can stand at a distance and watch as figures are discussed and hands are shaken. It's all very serious and pragmatic and it doesn't seem to be predicated on a love of books. Writers and translators may feel unwelcome amidst all this deal-making.

Nevertheless, for a visitor willing both to accept that and to do a lot of walking, there is plenty to see and enjoy at the LBF. The fair takes place at Earl's Court, a large convention center in London, and it is very well organized. The huge main room is where publishers from all over the world have their stands. One area has children's books, another travel books and maps, the religious (primarily Christian) books are in one (fairly small) spot, textbooks are in their own section, and so on. If you go past this room, after, of course, having browsed it to see what is being published these days (gift books seem to be a growing trend), and on into the next, smaller one, the atmosphere is different. This room is where the printers and binders have their stands, where people sell little book lights and other items for the book-lover, and where the various cultural agencies are located.

As a translator from the Scandinavian languages, I spent most of my time flitting between the Swedish Arts Council, the Danish Arts Agency's Literature Centre, Norwegian Literature Abroad, Finnish Literature Exchange, the Iceland booth (this was the first year the Icelandic publishers and agencies had their own stand). On Monday, April 20, there was a joint Nordic reception, and events like that are excellent for networking, especially for writers, translators, and people from smaller publishing companies.

I also made sure to visit the stands from other countries. Several of them publish an annual or biannual magazine with biographical information and short translated excerpts from their nation's top writers. This magazine, such as Sweden's Swedish Book Review or Portugal's Voices from the South, is meant to tempt publishers, but it is also a wonderful way for curious readers to learn about the kind of literature being published in other places. Because so few works are translated to English, unless you happen to read a particular tongue, you will never know what writers are doing in other parts of the world. I picked up as many of these magazines as I could carry. India was this year's special focus at the Book Fair, and I had no idea there were so many publishers in that country. It was very interesting to see the way these publishers manage to differentiate themselves; I was slightly surprised by how many seemed to have a distinct niche in spiritual books.

PEN is also at the fair every year, offering readings. And one of my very favourite parts is the Gourmand area, which showcases top cookbooks from every culture imaginable. Even if you can't read the books, you can salivate over the pictures. A number of chefs give demonstrations of their craft and they always make enough of the dish for the audience to try a bite as well.

In short, then, the LBF can be an enjoyable event, but only if you are prepared for what it can and can not give you. It is not a place to buy books or to connect with other writers. But it is a place to get a deeper understanding of the publishing world and to feel inspired (or overwhelmed) by the sheer number of books published each year.

Writing Your Family History: Five Hints from Chloe' Yelena Miller

My friend Chloé Yelena Miller will present a workshop on "Writing Your Family History" at the Ann Arbor Book Festival Writer's Conference, which will take place on Friday and Saturday, May 15-16, 2009. (Chloé is also coordinating the Author Breakfast that will take place as part of the Festival on May 16.)

If you can't get to Ann Arbor, you'll appreciate Chloé's guest post, featuring tips on her workshop topic. And if you can get to Ann Arbor, perhaps you'll want to check out the conference for yourself.

Writing Your Family History: Five Hints from Chloé Yelena Miller

On the first day of an adult memoir writing class I taught a few years ago, I asked the students what motivated them to take the class. One elderly woman said that she has been waiting for her children and grandchildren to ask her about her life story. They never did. She decided to take up the pen and write her own story.

Don’t risk losing your family’s stories. Here are five hints to help you collect, preserve and share family stories.

1. Start with what you know. Make a list of memories. Then, work step by step to add details and develop the narrative scene by scene. Try to include details that involve the five senses (What did the food taste like? Was there air conditioning?)

2. Expand on your memories by discussing them with family members. Inevitably, they will remember something differently. One technique is to share what you’ve written and ask them to fill in the blanks. Ask specific questions (What do you remember eating on your birthday? How did you find your first job?) Another technique, which is a more standard interview process, is to ask your family members very open ended questions. You could start with asking them about their earliest memories and what they enjoyed doing as children. Practice listening and don’t interject your own memories. See what they come up with.

3. Family history isn’t relegated to the past. Journal regularly to keep track of your life and what you witness. Include quotes from relatives that display their tone and speech patterns. Note where and when moments took place such as personal moments between you and a loved one and national moments, like Obama’s inauguration.

4. Learn (or remember) more about the past. If you are writing about something from your parents’ generation, read contemporary novels that they might have read as teenagers. Watch movies set in that period. Look at local newspaper ads. The word changes so quickly; remember what it was like then (without the internet, cell phones, etc.) Consider how daily life was different and use your findings as prompts for future questions.

5. Share your findings with family members. You may decide to make photocopies of your stories and documents, share scanned pictures on a website or even ask family members to write their own memories. This last holiday season, I asked family members to write a short piece about past Christmas celebrations. Each resulting piece was intimate and shared a slightly different experience. Being from a younger generation from most of the contributors, I loved learning about their past in their own words. They brought up details that I wouldn’t have known to ask about. Relatives had a chance to organize their memories and reminisce together, even across geographical boundaries.

My mother, a professional photographer, and I have compiled a collection of paired poems and photographs documenting our family’s emigration from southern Italy to New Jersey. These pieces are based on visits to the town where our family originated, oral histories collected with Americans and Italians, historical documents and cultural history about the towns and time periods involved. What we created contains an emotional truth and some facts, but the stories mostly contain facts as we experienced them or as they were told to us. We continue to translate the experiences in the form of our art.

Good luck and enjoy the journey.

Chloé Yelena Miller has poems published or forthcoming in Alimentum Journal, Lumina, Privatephotoreview.com, South Mountain Poets Chapbook, Sink Review and The Cortland Review. Her manuscript, Permission to Stay, was a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. She teaches writing online for Fairleigh Dickinson University and edits Portal Del Sol. She received an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a B.A. from Smith College.

Saturday Special: Win A Book!

The giveaway is now closed! Thanks to everyone for participating. I'm particularly happy to welcome the blog's new readers! And I'm delighted to announce that KIMBERLY ZOOK has won a copy of Christina Katz's Writer Mama. Kimberly, please e-mail me with your mailing address, and I'll forward the info to Christina.

Saturday posts don't happen too often around here, but I've made an exception to help celebrate the two-year anniversary of the publication of Christina Katz's Writer Mama book. This post is for all my writing friends, whether they are "writer mamas" or not!

Please welcome our guest blogger, Christina Katz!

The Writer Mama Two-Year Anniversary Blog Tour Giveaway!

Post #28: Your Book’s Features

During the book writing process, you’ve made an effort to make your book as unique as possible, right? Well, now that your book is complete, you have your first opportunity to write down the features that makes your book desirable to your book’s targeted audience.

Features are the simple facts that describe your book like size, length, font choice, cover design, etc. Sure, features sound straightforward, but one of the advantages of working with a traditional publisher is that care and consideration are devoted to every aspect of your book’s production. If your publisher has gone to some lengths to make sure your book has unique features to suit your audience, you’ll want to highlight those features as you prepare to market your book.

For example, Writer Mama has some unique features. First of all, the book was intentionally designed in a small, chunky size so it would be easy to stash in a diaper bag or give as a shower gift to a new mom. Over the past couple of years, dozens of moms have commented to me that they appreciate the stash-able, sturdy size. Will your book have a unique size or shape? Or is size not a marketable feature?

How was your book written to particularly suit your readership? For example, the short chapters with lots of condensed information were purposeful to make Writer Mama easy for a mom to read while sitting in a waiting room or car-pooling. I just re-connected with a friend from sixth grade who keeps her copy of Writer Mama stashed in her car so she can read it while ferrying her four kids around town. Mission accomplished! Now describe your book. What’s special about the way it is written or organized? Have you taken the reader into account? Or is format not a feature you’ll highlight?

You’ve probably noticed that book covers vary greatly from the most simple, two-color text only cover all the way to the fully designed, four-color cover extravaganza. Another unique feature of Writer Mama is the colorful, stylish book design. So many how-to writing books are a turnoff because they are gray, businesslike, and boring. In contrast, Writer Mama is sassy, fun, with a starburst of color on the cover. The book designer, Claudean Wheeler, really outdid herself when designing the cheerful cover and bright inside designs. Does your book’s cover design reflect something about the book’s intended reader?

You’ll want to remind readers that care and consideration has gone into the design and production of your book. So be sure to pay attention during the production process so you can communicate the distinct features when you are ready to start promoting your book.

Today's Book Drawing: To enter to win a signed, numbered copy of Writer Mama, answer the following question in this blog's comments:
What unique features will your book have that will take the reader's needs into account? Or what book from your bookshelf do you love for the way it suits your unique needs as a reader?
Thanks for participating! Only US residents, or folks with a US mailing address can participate in the drawing. Please only enter once per day.

Where will the drawing be tomorrow? Visit http://thewritermama.wordpress.com/ to continue reading the rest of the Writer Mama story throughout March 2009!

Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids by Christina Katz (Writer's Digest Books 2007)
Kids change your life, but they don't necessarily have to end your career. Stay-at-home moms will love this handy guide to rearing a successful writing career while raising their children. The busy mom's guide to writing life, this book gives stay-at-moms the encouragement and advice they need including everything from getting started and finding ideas to actually finding time to do the work - something not easy to do with the pitter-patter of little feet. With advice on how to network and form a a business, this nurturing guide covers everything a writer mama needs to succeed at her second job. Christina Katz is also the author of the newly released Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer's Digest Books 2008).

The Wednesday Web Browser: Questions for Deborah Treisman, Wiki for Job Seekers, and Guidance for Guest Bloggers

Have a question for New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman? Ask it here. And don't forget to check out the magazine's new Winter Fiction Issue, which is packed with promising stuff I have yet to read!
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John Griswold (aka "Oronte Churm") points us to a wiki for those on the academic job market in creative writing.
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Guest-blogging advice galore on Buzz, Balls & Hype. (via The Book Publicity blog)

Guest Post from a New MFA Student

I am happy to present this guest post from Deonne Kahler, who is about to begin the MFA adventure here in New York (at Queens College of The City University of New York). Please check back for a follow-up post from Deonne once her program gets underway. Enjoy!

A Fifth Reason to Go to Grad School? All the Ramen I Can Eat!

by Deonne Kahler

When I tell people I’m about to start an MFA program they say, Gee Deonne, you’ve already accumulated hundreds of clips (the result of writing for newspapers for seven years) so you must know how to string words together. Why the heck do you want to spend the money and time on a degree that might not increase your writing income one iota? (Question: is my use of the word “iota” further proof I don’t need an MFA?) And don’t you think you could just spend more time in bars (a la Hemingway, but without that nasty suicide business) and gather material that way? Don’t you think you should skip the academics, live life, and just write?

That’s perfectly fine advice, and I must admit it’s tempting to have a legitimate reason to spend more time in bars. But then I’d probably just end up writing some sad chronicle of my years battling alcoholism, involving overuse of the words “vomit,” “rock bottom,” and “rehab,” and lord knows we have enough of those.

The “just write” part is legitimate if you either feel like you already have a good grasp on craft, or you don’t and are prepared to learn by doing a lot of self-directed reading and writing. But if you’re anything like me that could take a long time, meaning, I’m a world-class procrastinator – I’m the Michael Phelps of procrastination. (Question: isn’t my willingness to use lame metaphors proof I do need an MFA?)

My reasons for going to grad school:

1. Focused, structured study of the art and craft of writing. I’ve yet to find a bartender who offered me a reading list, deadlines and critique.
2. A ready-made community of writers, both fledgling (students) and accomplished (faculty).
3. The chance to work on a literary journal (QC’s Ozone Park). This in tandem with my internship at The Feminist Press should give me excellent publishing and editorial experience.
4. Because I can. I’ve got the savings (for awhile, anyway), I’m entirely unencumbered, and I really, really, really want to do this. ‘Nuff said.

There’s only one thing I’m anxious about: grades. My undergrad experience in that department was, ahem, less than stellar, and I’m already anxious about that first grad school report card, because I’m pretty sure if it’s bad my parents will ground me. Other than that, I’m psyched for the experience. Like Michael Phelps before a race. (Somebody stop me.)

Here’s what I hope to accomplish at Queens:

1. Become a better writer. Duh.
2. Complete a manuscript. Whether that will be a novel or memoir remains to be seen, and I’m giving myself the first semester to decide. We don’t technically have to start our thesis (the manuscript) until second year, but I’m a slow writer and get anxious if I don’t have enough time to do something I care about. So I’m planning to start early.
3. Develop a daily writing practice. Up until now my non-freelance writing has been haphazard at best. I believe great writers are born from hard work and regular practice (how very Calvinist!), and since I do want to be great, or at least extra good, I’ll need the discipline of regular writing to carry me beyond the structure of grad school.

That’s where I’m at. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going, but if you don’t hear from me it means I sent home a terrible report card and am on restriction until I get my grades up, and I’d better quit my crying or I’ll really have something to cry about. Wish me luck.

Friday Find: Guest Post on the London Book Fair

Today we're lucky to have a report on the London Book Fair direct from the United Kingdom. Wales-based BJ Epstein went to London for the occasion, and provides a guest post here. Thank you, BJ!

On April 14-16, the London Book Fair took place at Earl’s Court in London. The fact that the fair’s official directory was over 400 pages tells you something about how many attendees and exhibitors there were. Categories included everything from animal care and breeding to English as a foreign language, from computer books to religious texts, from fashion to military, and from paranormal to travel books.

The Arab world was the focus for this year’s fair, and that meant that there were many stands with information about various Arabic-speaking countries and their literature. Some offered traditional pastries, travel information, or fact sheets, too. The booth for Saudi Arabia had two very large models of mosques, the Great Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque. Another booth featured 1001 Inventions, an exhibit on what Muslims have contributed to the world, including vocabulary worlds and medical techniques. One of the many cafés at the fair offered foods such as hummus or kebabs.

As a translator, writer, and editor, I often had the sense that the fair wasn’t really for me. Publishers and agents were on the prowl, looking to buy and sell rights, and they weren’t always very friendly when people who were not there to do business came by. Meanwhile, printers, distributors, packagers, stationers, and other such exhibitors sat in their booths alone, seeming a bit lonely. Several times, while looking at books on display, I was eagerly asked what publisher I was from, and when I replied that I was a translator, people quickly lost interest and left me alone to browse. I had thought that publishers would want to talk to people who could serve to translate, edit, or promote their works, and not just to other publishers or literary agents.

Personally, I found it most interesting to talk to people from literary organizations and from magazines. I learned more about how literary organizations from places such as Russia or Thailand try to promote their works abroad and also about subsidies for translation (for more on this, see my blog).

Another part of the fair that I quite enjoyed was a presentation on e-books. I learned that sales for e-books have increased dramatically in the past year or so, especially in the case of academic texts (because students are used to reading on-screen and also appreciate the lower prices of e-books), romance novels, and niche books, among others. An example of a niche book that was given is one that teaches readers how to dance. An advantage of an e-book is that it can be embedded with videos or animation, so that instead of having to use both a book and a DVD, everything is together on one “page”, and readers can read and practice dancing at the same time. I had known very little about e-books before (despite having edited and produced one as a fundraiser for Bryn Mawr College), and I found it fascinating to hear about all the different formats, readers, and methods of promotion. If e-books catch on as the speaker predicted, this could be a real boon to writers who want to cut out the middleman and produce their own books, since e-self-publishing isn’t too respected at the moment.

There were several seminars and readings at the book fair, but I missed them all because of other activities. One thing I didn’t miss was the cooking demonstrations. Next to a very large display of recent cookbooks from around the world, chefs such as Yann Barault from Le Cordon Bleu (who made cod with morels while berating his assistant) or Hayden Wood from Australia (who improvised cocktails, dancing and shaking the bottles at the same time), tempted us with samples of their creations. Many organizations and countries had receptions at various points during the fair, as well, sometimes at restaurants or at ambassadors’ homes.

I was at the fair for many hours, studying all sorts of books from every corner of the planet, and by the end, I felt overwhelmed by all the works out there. I knew I’d never be able to read even a fraction of those books, even though, like many practicing writers, I am an avid reader. I spent the entire train ride back to Swansea reading, visions of all the piles of the books spurring me on.