Photo of author Dan Chaon taken at Bookcourt, February 6, 2012.
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Writing
Writer Alec Wilkinson, author of The Ice Balloon, discusses how writers should ask themselves “Is this true?” whenever they write something. Says Wilkinson, “I think any writer who can put something on the page, and say to himself or to herself “Is this true?” and of course you understand I don’t mean literally true, I mean true to some emotion, true to some thought, true to some circumstance that was involved in the creation of whatever piece of prose or poetry you’re working on, I think that if you can satisfactorily answer that question to yourself, you’ve probably got material that will be interesting to a reader.”
Be sure to check out Brain Picking’s great article by Michelle Legro on Wilkinson’s book The Ice Balloon.
Writer Ben Marcus reads from his novel The Flame Alphabet at Bookcourt in Brooklyn, NY, on Jan. 19, 2012.
Because Dec. 22 is the shortest day of the year. I have no idea if that’s true, but the Twitter-verse says it’s so, so why not? Made me think about one of my favorite short stories ever: 92 Days by Larry Brown. If you haven’t read it, oh man, you have a real treat in store. Track it down, get yourself a nice spot in some bar, start reading and you will have yourself a hell of a time. Just a great story. I found my copy of the book and started reading and yes, just to reconfirm, the story is awesome. So I am really glad it’s the shortest day of the year and that it’s Short Story Day, for reminding me about 92 Days, but also because @shortstoryday was encouraging people to write a #storyin10words. I had fun writing a few and reading other people’s contributions. Folks, the shortest day of the year is NOT over yet. So why not do the following: Find 92 Days. Go to a bar and read it. While there, compose a #storyin10words.
Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet, provides some great writing advice for writers: “One thing I think that writers can try to do is understand how they read. When you pick up a book and half way through the first page you’re not interested, what is it that’s failing to grab your attention? What is it that’s missing? What is it exactly that bores you? And then in turn when you write, are you doing any of those things yourself?”
(This video is part of the Knopf Doubleday Writers on Writing series.)
Celebrating the success of her debut novel, The Night Circus, in the Doubleday offices (Sept. 26, 2011).
Had the opportunity to record Poet Laureate Philip Levine in the studio recently. It was amazing to hear him read “What Work Is.” We’ll be using the recordings during Knopf’s annual celebration of poetry during Poetry Month (April 2012).
This is a pretty amazing online project presenting the work of Mark Twain. Not just the text of his letters, articles, and books, but scholarly annotation. It’s a work-in-progress, not just because the scholarly work continues, but because Mark Twain was extremely prolific and there is a huge amount of work to post. According to the site, in addition to the many books, pamphlets, speeches, and articles he wrote, Twain is believed to have written over 50,000 letters in his lifetime.
The goal of the site is to “produce a digital critical edition, fully annotated, of everything Mark Twain wrote.” It’s clear how much work has gone into the project, and the attention to detail is impressive.
This is a great example of using the web to document, organize and showcase a rich archive of a writer’s body of work. I think it also shows the limitation of something like Google Books — which of course has amazing potential and is certainly useful from a search perspective but currently lacks scholarly annotation or even basic descriptions and historical/literary context, not to mention its documented metadata problem.
With the Mark Twain Project, though, one huge improvement would be for the site to allow users to export the texts into formats that could easily be imported to the reader of their choice. There are other types of solutions (HTML5, “Books in Browsers“) coming which would make an option like that unnecessary, but as the site is currently built, an export function would be a nice addition to an already feature rich site.
Smith Magazine has a new project (and forthcoming book) — The Moment: “Stories of how a single moment changed your life in a profound way.” Submit your “moment” at the site or on the Facebook page.