The short story form: malignant tumor for writers seeking careers?

If the doctor were a publisher or an agent, she'd say the news was terminal.

If the doctor were a small press publisher, she'd say "take 2 aspirin and call me in the morning."

If the doctor were a writer or an editor, she'd say, "Let's keep it all under observation."

What is a short-story writer to do in a publishing climate where the form is underappreciated by readers, booksellers, agents and publishers, and yet there are so many brilliant works of short fiction being written and published anyway (albeit by obscure literary journals, PODs and small-circ U presses)?

Stephen King takes a stab at it in this weekend's NY Times. But he's not the first to try to solve this devastating riddle.

"A New Way With Words—The traditional division between the novel and short story is becoming increasingly blurred" — Julian Gough, The Guardian, 9.17.2007

"Introduction" — Nathan Leslie, The Pedestal, 8.21.2007

"Long books are no place for short stories" — Alyssa McDonald, Guardian Unlimited, 6.22.2007

"Why the short story is still alive and well" — AI Kennedy, The Independent, 6.12.2007

"Revisiting the short story, and falling in love again" — Writing Under a Pseudonym (blog), 4.28.2007

"A Word on Short Story Collections" — Nathan Bransford, Nathan Bransford Literary Agent (blog), 6.14.2006

"The Atlantic and The Decline of the Short Story" — Quinn Dalton, MediaBistro, 4.22.2005

"Ask the Secret Agent: short story collections, and more" — Maud Newton (blog), 11.16.2004

"Books: Brief Encounter" — Peter Stanford, The Independent, 3.21.2004

"Literary magazine editors on the state of the story" — Jim Barnes, The Literary Review, 1994

Are short story collections really that endangered?

Are their really NO readers out there to appreciate them?

Is there really any good reason to write short fiction commercially?

Help me out here, folks. I wanna know.

RE: How to be the Right writer

While attending last week's PNBA convention, I picked up enough books, catalogs, bookmarks, postcards and fliers to warrant a trip to the chiropractor. Today, as I sort through the paper pyramid of hidden treasures, I ran across a terrific article in the PMA Independent (Sept 2007 edition) by Christian Alighieri which offers separate, bulleted lists of things publishers and editors look for in potential writers. For our purposes, I'll call them the "Go To" and "Run From" lists.

While I think it's really important for writers to read the entire article (it should be in the Independent archives in October), I can't reproduce it here, but I can make a quick reference here to those Go To, as well as Run From characteristics that help publishers and editors make their decisions about who they will ultimately bring on board.

"Go To" authors:

1. Have a vision.

2. Can be objective about their work.

3. Are able to intelligently defend their editorial decisions.

4. Find ways to be attractive.

5. Have industry contacts.

6. Understand the publishing game.

7. Appreciate their industry support system (editors, publicists, etc.).

 

"Run From" authors:

1. Have bad attitudes about publishing.

2. Are introverted.

3. Talk about themselves constantly.

4. Think that editors are the adversary.

5. Are naive enough to think that publishing their book means they can quit their day job.

What this short list, and the long list of things I learned at the PNBA convention, signals is a desperate need for writers to move beyond the notion that all it takes is writing well. Step away from the Writer's Digest magazine, folks…it's not good enough to have the perfect page one hook or the 10-second elevator speech; it's really about understanding all the mechanisms that get a manuscript to its final form, and then it's about selling that manuscript, and THEN it's about whether you will even have a career. The only way you'll know these things is to start looking, deeply, into the architecture of the publishing industry.

And there's a lot to study—probably as much research as you'll do in any MFA program, truth be told—but the better handle you have on the stages, processes, and realities of publishing, the more likely you will be able to develop a publishing career that's not rife with ugly surprises, unpleasant experiences, and lost causes.

Essay Contest: Writing it Real

Sheila Bender's Writing It Real, an online magazine for those who write from personal experience, announces an essay contest:

Cash Prizes
The top 3 winners will also receive their choice of:
a) LifeJournal for Writers software -or-
b) Writing and Publishing Personal Essays

10 Honorable Mentions will receive a detailed written response from Sheila Bender via email

The top 3 essays will be also published in Writing It Real (with permission of the author).

All entrants will receive, in addition to consideration for the contest, a 6-month subscription to Writing It Real, our online magazine. We will start six-month subscriptions or extend current subscriptions when we receive and process the $15 contest reading fee.

Contest Rules
Entries must be postmarked or electronically submitted by December 1, 2007. We accept unpublished personal essays of up to ten double-spaced pages (12 Point Times New Roman or Courier) on any theme. All winners will be announced via email by December 25, 2007.

Electronic submissions can be made using the online form (the $15 reading fee is electronically processed through PayPal).

Mailed entries must be accompanied by a $15 reading fee (check or money order). Your submission must include a cover sheet with your name, address, phone number and email address. Please mail entries to:

Writing It Real Contest
394 Colman Drive
Port Townsend WA, 98368

Please DO NOT send an SASE, entries will not be returned

International entrants (as well as U.S.) may pay their reading fee electronically through PayPal or Ikobo. Send payments to 'sbender@writingitreal.com'. On the cover sheet, please refer to date the electronic payment was made and the electronic service used.

All entries will be judged by Sheila Bender. A list of winners will be be emailed to all contestants by December 25, 2007.

Resolutions checkup

I think it's groovy enough that I am even thinking about my Creative Resolutions this late in the year. So brownie points for me.

My progress these last 9 months:

...stars indicate scale of success

********** 1. Refuse new projects that don't further my current goals. Both a strength and a weakness for me. Update: I've enjoyed getting some projects off my desk and have been pretty good at saying "no" for the time being. Always a challenge.

********** 2. Eat smart, exercise daily and leave the house every day. Quality of health improves quality of creativity! Update: I had oatmeal for breakfast. Played volleyball Monday night. Still need to leave the house today. Nothing too impressive, but the effort is there. Be fair, it's September, the busiest month of the year.

********** 3. Continue the daily schedule (work, family life, personal life) I started last fall but drop all aspects of creative working at night (save classes and social events like readings). Update: I like my more informal schedule. A true switch from my more hardline To Do List mentality. But things are falling into place.

********** 4. FAILED RESOLUTION (struck from the list back in March.) Stars no longer count.

********** 5. Have more fun! Creative burnout is no fun at all. Update: Yep. But the question is, are YOU having fun yet?

********** 6. Work harder at keeping the household organized so that it doesn't cripple my own productivity. Update: Wow. So much better these days.

********** 7. Read more. Update: Need to pick up this pace. A lot on my plate to keep me from reading. And so many titles waiting for attention.

********** 8. Manage my media time. Update: Still good with this. Refining how I use technology, of late.

55/70 stars. Not quite a B on your typical grading scale. Okay, so I need to get some more exercise. My bones have already told me that...but how did you do?

PNBA 2007: Main Street at the Crossroads

The panel I contributed to last week at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association convention in Bellevue, WA found moderate success. I've decided to put my notes for the discussion on the 'net for folks interested in the discussion. You can find that link here. The panel blurb for the program reads as follows:

"Main Street at the Crossroads: Uniting local authors, publishers, booksellers and readers"

DESCRIPTION: The publishing world has witnessed some striking changes in
recent months: the AMS bankruptcy and its impact on PWG (now Perseus); last
spring's steep postal rate hikes; and dwindling advances—but increased marketing
responsibilities—for new writers. The consequences of these changes are being
felt not only by small presses, but by booksellers, and there is concern over
the future and diversity of new American voices if current industry models don't
adapt. Moderator Tamara Sellman (independent editor, Writer's Rainbow Literary
Services) leads this morning's discussion to explore what can be done to more
effectively promote literature on the local level (from writer to publisher to
bookseller to reader). Special focuses include distribution, niche publishing,
working with new media, and grassroots marketing.

Thanks for taking a look! More on the PNBA, American intellectualism, etc. this week.

Contest announcement for Pac NW writers

Hugo Genre Competition: Hauntings

From The Egyptian Book of the Dead to the ghost of Hamlet’s father to the movie Poltergeist, popular culture— of every era and in every corner of the world — has a preoccupation with hauntings. Whether communicating through static on a TV screen or encouraging Hamlet to investigate a “murder most foul,” the supernatural has a grip on our imagination in very real ways.

Yet hauntings aren’t supernatural by definition. In Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the hallucination of an eye drives a man to murder, and in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is the inner demons that haunt the protagonist most. Lingering terror can be found in an ominous past, present, or future; at a crossroads; near woods; or inside our own fears.

For this installment of the Hugo Genre Competition, we are looking for stories reflecting the theme “Hauntings,” using one of the three prompts below as a starting point:

Time:
The present is haunted by the aura of our pasts, our futures, and the looming presence of experiences, memories and fantasies that may not even be our own. In Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Eleanor falls so hard for Hill House and its history of violence and insanity that when she’s forced to leave, she kills herself. In Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, the story of a doomed soldier relies upon a structural pastiche of time to haunt us with the question of what is real. How can time, from the murky drudges of the past to the impending doom of the future, haunt us?

Space:
Places, such as the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, the Lutz’s house in Amityville, or even Richard Hugo House’s basement, stir sensations that drive us to the borders of rational understanding. We are especially drawn to isolated locales, where terrible things happen which we can merely record, powerless to do much more. Think Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the original serial killer tale, which takes place along the edge of a rural road, or the terrifying experiment that was H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. What is it about a space that conjures dread and doubt? Is it our helplessness against chaos? The randomness of violence? Our inability to control our own landscapes?

Mind:
Consciously and unconsciously, we are haunted by our fears and desires. In L. Ron Hubbard’s Fear, the story of a professor searching for an hour of life he can’t recall horrifies the reader with the demons his search reveals—or is the main character simply haunted by demons from his own mind? H.P. Lovecraft, whose characters struggled as much with their own sanity as any external threat, writes, "The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains…A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with seriousness and portentousness…of that more terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature, which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos." What is it about our fears and desires that haunts us? Which ones are so powerful they push us over the edge?

Submissions must be received by October 15. Winner receives a $250 prize and the opportunity to read at the Hugo Genre Reading on October 31st 7 p.m. at Richard Hugo House. Two runners-up will be asked to read an excerpt from their stories as well. By submitting, entrants agree to be present for the reading if selected as the winner or runners-up. Winner and runners-up will be announced October 23, 2007.

Manuscript Requirements: Please send a $5 entry fee. We can accept cash or a check/money order to Richard Hugo House. You can enter as many times as you like as long as you pay an entry fee for each story. Manuscripts must be under 5,000 words and should be double-spaced with one-inch margins and 12 point type. The author’s name should not appear on the manuscript. Include one cover sheet with story title, author’s name, address, phone and e-mail address. The story title should appear on the first page of the manuscript. Please number your pages. Send a total of three copies of your manuscript and one copy of your cover sheet. We cannot return manuscripts, so please keep a copy! You must live in WA, OR, MT or ID. Questions? Contact Chris Leasure: development@hugohouse.org

PNBA: Lessons learned (thrifty nickel edition)

Too tired to get too wordy on the subject, but I had an excellent experience during my first day at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association convention today. I'll probably expand on the following bullet points in successive entries here, but for now, a Top Ten list of lessons learned:

1. Put more faith in technology. They're doing some groovy-cool things out there that will redefine what it means to publish and to be published. They mean good things for writers (and editors, if writers are smart enough to use them) and publishers from the ground up.

2. Note to self: revisit the long tail theory, envision my place on the tail. Really. Everyone's got a place.

3. Eat protein breakfasts before early sessions. Coffee just ain't enough.

4. Don't wait to be introduced to key players. Just dive in, it's far more gratifying.

5. Passion and personality count just as much as preparation. Be sincere.

6. Try not to lose your cell phone next time.

7. Writers need to learn not only the process of manuscript editing and why it's important, but what the production schedule means and what it will demand of them well after they've written "the end" at the bottom of the last manuscript page.

8. Release date and publication date are not the same thing.

9. Writers who do their research and/or are user-friendly with the newest technologies (and the related ways with which they can analyze hard data about their audiences) will do much better than writers who think that all they have to do is write a good book.

10. Anything can happen. Anything. Imagine holding a printed, bound paper book in your hand, then pressing a bubble in the margin and dialing up wifi to connect with other readers who are also reading the title you are reading. Imagine.

Taking Comfort May Not Solve a Dilemma, But…

I read this passage from Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, earlier this week, and I think it has somehow reconciled my questions about the relevance of my work as writer , which I pondered over last summer. Here's the passage:

"…that's not the way this music works. This music takes faith. And faith isn't what the music business is about anymore. It's absolutely frustrating, and it's overwhelming as well. I can't sleep. My mind is running. But if nothing else, I get to play, and the response from the kids is so massive and beautiful that it makes me get up the next day and fight again. The kids come up to me after the show and say, 'It sucks what the record companies are doing to you. But we're here for you, and we're telling everybody.'"

This passage is from a musician, Kenna, whose work seemed to have a fan base in real life but which did not measure well with focus groups (highlighting the idea that sometimes, intellectualizing something can take away its qualities of success).

I took that passage in my own mind and rendered it sensible to the mindset of a writer with a lot of readers who still doesn't break into the mainstream to become a commercial success. Check this out:

"…that's not the way this literature works. This literature takes faith. And faith isn't what the publishing business is about anymore. It's absolutely frustrating, and it's overwhelming as well. I can't sleep. My mind is running. But if nothing else, I get to write, and the response from the readers is so massive and beautiful that it makes me get up the next day and fight again. The readers come up to me after the reading and say, 'It sucks what the publishing industry is doing to you. But we're here for you, and we're telling everybody.'"

While I don't have broad cross-sections of readers (at least not that I'm aware of!), I do occasionally get "fan mail" in email, and people do seem to respond well to my readings, so I can relate, at least in a more humble way, to this passage. What it comes down to is faith, certainly. Faith in myself as a writer. Faith that those who respond to my reading aren't a limited population. Faith that my readers are discerning and passionate. Even more so, however, I think it's got to do with the human element of communication that is part and parcel of every dispatch ever relayed between sender and receiver: it's this idea that I can still touch someone, move them, inspire them to think or to act, even if the publishing industry lets me down. Absolutely, I would love to do these things on a grand scale, it's in the egotistical interests of all artists, regardless their chosen media, to want to reach as many as they are able to. But my work isn't created in a vacuum, I don't communicate it to a vacuum, and the readers out there aren't part of a vacuum either.

Really, after the sheer pleasure and sense of accomplishment that comes from completing a new manuscript, it's that one friendly note I get every so often that keeps me going. And it can keep me going a good long while. A friend of mine recently stated in her blog that the really nice rejections she gets are almost as good as acceptances. That's the same kind of psychic fuel I'm referring to, and it has to do with human connection.

Which appeals to me and my rebellious nature. After all, while the publishing industry might have a huge hand in shaping my career from a materialist's perspective, it's still readers—real human beings who do not comprise an abstract industry—who I work for, in the end.

I suspect that's who Kafka and Melville were writing for, and Melville; I suspect that's who Van Gogh was painting for, who Bob Marley was performing for.

No, I don't want to be a posthumous artist, nor do I wish to romanticize that. What I want to do is remember why I started this business of creative writing in the first place. It all began back in preschool, really, when I realized that my own writing could move people…and hasn't stopped since.

Serendipitously, I followed up a link to a small press in Portland while seeking out publishers for my own work to discover they were publishing work from one of my favorites of the underappreciated author set: Poe Ballantine. From the Hawthorne Books website comes this mission: "We suspected that good writers were being cast aside as a result of consolidation in the publishing industry, and in 2001 we decided to find these writers and give them a voice."

O! my soaring heart! I jotted off a note to the editor to thank them for giving Poe the place he deserves in literature. And naturally, they were quite glad to hear that they were making a difference. Poe is one of their favorite authors, as well.

I suggest we all, as creative people, make these kinds of efforts. You see, it means the world to all of us to know we are reaching others. But how will those we admire ever know this, if they don't make the Big Time otherwise, and we don't tell them ourselves?

RE: upcoming affordable online writing workshops

from Writer's Rainbow Literary Services

#1. October Scavenger Hunt: CLICHES




(all genres)





Registration and fee due: Oct 1





Fee: $15.





Minimum students required: 4.





No maximum number of students.

Think you can recognize clichés? This is an easy, but eye-opening, exercise. I'll post a cliché test—a document riddled with various kinds of clichés—at the private workshop page. You'll have one week to identify and report all the clichés you see. Any writer who successfully identifies all the clichés in the document will receive a refund of their workshop fee and recognition on the Writer's Rainbow home page for 4 weeks! Documents revealed Oct 15. Assignment due Oct 22. Winners announced Oct 26. When registering, specify: poetry, fiction or nonfiction.

 

#2. October Revision Workshop: THE COMPRESSION GAME





(short fiction)





Registration and fee due: Oct 1





Fee: $20.







Minimum students required: 4.





No maximum number of students.

This is a private online workshop in which you select one page from a work of your own short fiction at the private workshop page, then apply the directions for The Compression Game as posted at the private workshop page. You'll have one week to complete the exercise, and then you will post your compressed manuscript at the private workshop page so that everyone can see how your work stood up to the exercise of compression. I will pick the winner of The Compression Game; the winner will receive a refund of their workshop fee and recognition on the Writer's Rainbow home page for 4 weeks! "Before" manuscripts posted by Oct 8. "After" manuscripts posted by Oct 15. Winner announced Oct 19.

from MRCentral.net

Magical Realism 101—DIAGNOSIS: MR





(short stories and novel excerpts)





Interactive Workshop Schedule: NOV 6 through DEC 11, 2007—Tuesdays 9-10am Pacific Time



Registration and fee due: Oct 11 for members; Oct 19 for nonmembers.





Fee: $35 for members; $55 for nonmembers.





Minimum students required: 4.





Maximum number of students: 6.

This weekly one-hour interactive workshop for fiction writers (short stories, novelists) is designed to build the writer's understanding of magical realist elements by learning to identify them in their own work and the work of others. This is not a writer's critique workshop; we will discuss technique only as it pertains to writing using magical realist elements. Discussions will center on the effectiveness of magical realist elements as they currently exist in a manuscript and whether they could be improved. Other categories of speculative writing will likely be discussed during this time. Workshop repeats in winter 2008 and spring 2008.

RE: 24 Books I Would Love To Have

Yes, this is a brazen request, but hey, it's my birthday in two weeks. Here are 24 titles you could buy me as a gift, if you're so inclined. And remember, the following week is BAFAB (Buy A Friend a Book week).

The links take you to Amazon, but you don't have to buy them there. My Amazon Wish List is where I store all my most wanted titles (currently well over 100). You can sort them by priority by clicking on the appropriate drop-down box.

I also appreciate quality used versions as well. I love to repurpose.

Inspired? Send me some books!

Tamara Sellman, 321 High School Road NE, Ste D3 PMB 204, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

*****

FICTION

The Apocalypse Reader by Justin Taylor (Editor)

The Artist of the Missing: A Novel by Paul LaFarge (Author), Stephen Alcorn (Illustrator)

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (Author)

The Children of Men by P.D. James (Author)

Dog Years by Gunter Grass (Author)

The Egg and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) by Sherwood Anderson (Author)

The Last Town on Earth: A Novel by Thomas Mullen (Author)

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (Author)

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Author)

The Public Burning by Robert Coover (Author)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Author)

NONFICTION

The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction by Brian Kiteley (Author)

Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings (Author)

Joe Gould's Secret by Joseph Mitchell (Author)

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez (Author), Kristin Ohlson (Author)

Masonry Unmasked: An Insider Reveals the Secrets of the Lodge by John Salza (Author)

Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields (Author)

Morphology of the Folktale (American Folklore Society Publications) by V. Propp (Author), et al.

Peeling the Onion by Gunter Grass (Author), Michael Henry Heim (Translator)

The Spirit of Carnival: Magical Realism and the Grotesque by David K. Danow (Author)

Wish I Could Be There: Notes From a Phobic Life by Allen Shawn (Author)

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (Author)

POETRY

Selected Poems, 1963-1983 by Charles Simic (Author)

The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic (Author)

RE: Ken Jennings is my hero

Yep, that's right. I'm a game show junkie from Seattle. How could I not be a fan of Ken Jennings? He just won the first annual Grand Slam tournament of game show champions, going head-to-head with the geek incarnate Ogi Ogas, who is perhaps one of the smartest people in the world. No Stephen Hawking, but they could probably share a dorm together at Genius U and compare GPAs.

Anyhow, I was held in awe and inspired by both players' abilities to retrieve answers at the rate of about one answer for every five seconds of question relay (often, the questioner would not even get to finish the question). The competition was fierce and intense and good-natured and, well, amazing. And Ken Jennings is one of the nicest fellows you'll probably never meet. I like to refer to him as Boy Wonder.

Aside from perhaps the math and numbers portion of the Grand Slam series, I think most writers and creative people—if they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is, namely, learning, observing, paying attention and trying new things—should be able to fare okay in answering many of the questions on Grand Slam. Oh, not on the fly like these guys. They're not really guys, I've decided. They are actually male versions of the fembots from the Bionic Woman series of the 70s. You can hear the little computer sounds whirring just beneath the surfaces of their humanoid faceplates…

But seriously, I think we can, or should, be able to solve anagrams, current events questions, logic puzzles and the like. I've often said of good writing that it has, at its source, solid thinking, and I'm sticking with that assumption today.

So how to boost one's brain if trivia isn't your thing? At Pick Your Brain, they recently posted a nice survey of how to do this sort of thing, with links all across the web to suit your curiosity. I'm also interested in learning more about these Brain Age games I keep seeing commercials about on TV.

Certainly, it would take little prompting for me to suggest that watching quiz shows might be one way to learn, as well. I know, it's rather unorthodox to use the television for anything as erudite as boosting one's brain, but the questions on Jeopardy are factually solid, the word puzzles on Chain Reaction can heighten your recall for vocabulary, and you can get a solid week's worth of People magazine trivia plus a little brush up on your high school academics in a single episode of Weakest Link.

What can I say? I'm from the MTV generation. I used to spend my days after school at my grandma's house watching Price is Right, Match Game, and Jokers are Wild. No wonder I'm a great money manager, I can pick up on pop and sociocultural nuances, and I play a mean hand of poker.

ATTN: Women's Writing Community invitation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opening Up the Process:
Friends of Jane Membership

* Work on Craft

* Find support for your writing

* Learn from Experts

Because we receive many requests from writers looking for a place in our community, Jane's Stories Press Foundation announces its new membership organization: Friends of Jane.

As a Friend of Jane you are entitled to:

* the bimonthly Jane's Stories newsletter with announcements, calls for submissions, and features on writers;

* access to the Jane's Stories listserv where you can join discussions on writing, publishing, and promoting your work;

* access to the Jane's Pages Wiki, where you may post work for review, contribute to group discussion on specific writing topics, share and receive information on awards, retreats, and other topics of use to writers;

* 20 % discounts on Jane's Stories workshops and retreats.

Friends of Jane are also eligible to apply for the Writers' Cooperative, and may become Circle and Workshop Leaders.

Membership in Jane's Stories is available for only $30 a year ($15 for Seniors/Students/Fixed Income)

Until January 1, 2008, you may receive a free two-month trial membership. Click the link below to sign up!

For more information and the free trial membership:

Visit the Jane's Stories Membership Page

or call us at 1-800-603-6065

or simply click on the link below to get started immediately:

Join Friends of Jane now!

Catching up with the world...

How did I miss this last week? Oh yeah, last week was the first week back to school. I'm sure I would've missed even the end of the world then, things were so hectic. Perhaps more serendipitous to me was the fact I uncovered this bit of news on the sixth anniversary of September 11.

Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions


FBI Is Told to Halt Warrantless Tactic


By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer


Friday, September 7, 2007


Page A01

A federal judge struck down controversial portions of the USA Patriot Act in a
ruling that declared them unconstitutional yesterday...

Tip surfing

Photo: "Internet cafe at Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Bangkok, 2007" by Matthias Sebulke

______________

So much great information on the web. So little time to find it all. But I did find these three tips to share:

TIP #1. The Art of Writing: 10 Tips from the Masters

This is a terrific thumbnail filled with advice for newer writers as well as older writers who sometimes need reminders. I also like the creative use of quotes to illustrate the tips. From Pick The Brain

TIP #2. At Angela Booth's Writing Blog, Angela has been offering a series of tips on time management for writers. Her first suggestion seems obvious or elementary, and yet it's the only way to open the door to the writing life: "Tip 1: see yourself as a competent writer." I liked the entry so much that it sparked another suggestion, which I posted here in the blog comments section.

TIP #3. I stand corrected! (And thank God for that.)

In this week's weekly prompt at Writer's Rainbow, I pointed to the recent AP/Ipsos poll on American reading habits, which suggested that 1 out of 4 adults did not read a book last year.

That fact still stands. However, it appears there has been some misinterpretation about that fact. At The Written Nerd, a blog positing that "there ought to be more voices for the realistically bright side of change in the world of books," the interpretation of the statistic has been called into question over a couple of key points.

For instance, the blogger there wonders why the fact isn't interepreted instead as "Seventy-five percent of Americans read a book last year." Now, doesn't that sound a whole lot better?

And let's take things further into perspective. The blog also points out that an NEA survey taken five years ago suggested that "56% of Americans read any book in 2002."

One can reasonably conclude, therefore, that, in fact, Americans are actually reading more now than they did five years ago, right? RIGHT?

Musing First Days and Last Days

Cole Thomas: "View on the Catskill Early Autumn, 1837" [public domain]

A short and personal lament about the First Day of School

It really is much harder for me now than it ever used to be, getting through the last couple of days following Labor Day but before the First Day of School. Emotionally and psychologically harder. Can't say as to why that's so.

It's not that I'm unprepared. I shop early. The kids get their new duds and school supplies well in advance of September. We all attend all the pre-First Day open houses. I am ready with activity lists and newly organized files and updated contact sheets.

It's not that we aren't all ready for the typical school-day schedule. We sleep and rise on that same timewheel anyway, so there's no big adjustment for us to make.

And it's not my kids' fault. Of course, they can't wait to go back to class; they usually cry on the Last Day of School because they don't want it to end and would certainly be first on the waiting list for any year-round school that might ever be constructed here. (The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, for that matter.)

It's as if I'm standing on top of an enormous faultline that's always been there, but it's only today, though, that I've noticed it shifting beneath me.

Today, I witnessed the boy scouts raising the flag at the intermediate school. I drank coffee with PTO moms. I helped plan an elementary school fundraiser with two other women who are also practically neighbors, but most definitely friends.

And today, the superintendent of schools thanked the parents in the audience for leaving our children in the hands of his staff. I thought it a nice gesture, but it made me sad to think that I couldn't be hanging out with my kids all day in school as well. (I could use a refresher course in history, for instance.)

Perhaps my struggle with the last few days of summer comes because I am, in fact, an atypical mom; I am not ready to dump my kids back into public school for a much-needed break like everyone else. Coffeehouses and lunch joints were packed with celebrants today, all of them moms. Meanwhile, I can't wait to ask them how their days went.

The thing is, my kids are my break.

I'm no doting mother; I thrive on their independence. But I link summertime with children and playtime, and I simply don't want such things to come to an end. Which, in fact, is atypical for me, for I usually can't wait for the fall. I have baking and fall planting and holiday projects and rainy days and cozy fireplaces to look forward to.

So I suppose my struggle to reconcile the waning days of summer marks a milestone; perhaps I have reached the golden years with my girls, both of them preteen, postkinder and wonderfully companionable. I feel like the girls they are. We knit together more tightly now as a family than we ever could have predicted or dreamed. I don't want the structure and anxiety of school now to tear that all asunder. For perhaps the first time in my life, I don't want to notice the leaves changing. Not just yet.

Well then. It's a sign, right? That the summer of 2007 shall go down in the family annals as a season to remember?

Oh, but aren't they all?

Thanks for reading. More about writing and the creative life mañana.