GoneReading looks like a worthy cause

I just learned (via a post on the blog) about GoneReading, a shopping site that offers gifts for readers AND a promise that 100% of profits will be donated to "fund reading libraries and other literacy projects in the developing world." Read more about the mission of the group here, and, if you want to support them, go shopping here.

Block the Internet

The blogpost title is ironic, right? If you block the internet, you can't read the blogpost. Nonetheless, it's good advice.

I'm making my way through the new issue of Poets & Writers, which seems to have more good stuff in than usual, which is saying something, because it's usually filled with useful and/or interesting articles. This time, there's fodder for several blogposts, but I'm going to start with one that really hit home.

Novelist Ellen Sussman's article, "A Writer's Daily Habit: Four Steps to Higher Productivity," is straightforward, relevant to most writers I know, and easily implementable. The 4 steps? The first is "Prewriting Prep"--meditation. I would suggest that there are other ways to clear the mind in order to prepare for the work ahead, but meditation works. Next is "Block the Internet"--and I couldn't agree more. Sussman even recommends the Freedom software program that I've been using lately, because apparently her willpower is no stronger than mine. I'm so pleased to see that another writer--a successful writer--relies on this program. Next is Sussman's "Unit System"--and I'm not quite as sold on this one. In essence, she divides her writing time into one hour blocks but spends the last 15 minutes of each hour on a break, whether it's beginning the laundry or dinner or taking the dog out, or whatever. She's still writing during that time--her mind is still on the work--but it has a restorative effect that allows her to return to the desk with new energy when the next unit begins. Finally, she recommends "Daily Writing"--which doesn't need explanation. I completely agree with this one, too, especially for longer projects where it's important to keep it all in your head. If you take too much time away from it, don't be surprised if you end up with loose ends and dropped threads.

More on this issue in the coming week.

The New Yorker: Keep or Throw Away?

A reader of my New Yorker Fiction Commentaries writes:

I have a question which might not deal directly - but certainly indirectly - with this post. I've been subscribing to the NY for the past 4-5 years. I keep all my issues. Which is to say that by now I have two boxes full. I kind of want to get rid of them. Just wondering what other readers do? Maybe I'm just a packrat and throwing them away is no big deal? 
I'd be interested in hearing from you and your readers, or seeing some poll - throw away or keep?
Is there any advantage to keeping these issues or am I just wasting time/space?

We'd love to hear your comments on this. Here's my answer, though. Donate them if you can, recycle them if you can't. When I subscribed to the paper magazine, I recycled them when if finished with them. That was one reason I started my weekly commentary, just so I'd force myself to read the magazine every week. Especially now that subscribers have access to the online archive, I don't see any real reason to hang on to the artifacts. Spread the wealth, one way or another. (My subscription now is on my Kindle, and for a while I was keeping all of the past copies, even those I'd read, but I don't even do that anymore.)

Tips for Writers: Get to Know Your Characters

Recently, I had a guest post gig on Dixon Rice's blog for his "Top O'Day for Authors" series: What are the stakes? My point was, in other words, it's essential for a writer to know what's at risk for his characters. Or, as Ellen Meister puts it in her own "Writing Tip" series this morning, What does your main character want? These are fundamental questions that a fiction writer must address in order to create material on the page that will engage readers.

But in order to answer these questions, you have to get to know your characters. As I am embarking on a new book--I reserved this week for outlining and research--I am also beginning to understand (or try to understand) my new protagonist and the people around her. To that end, I am filling out a character questionnaire that I created. (I adapted mine from a couple of different sources, and you may want to do the same. Here's a relative short example: character questionnaire, but I would recommend going into even greater depth.). By the time I'm finished, I'll know just about everything about Kate (that's her name, for the moment): favorite foods, sexual proclivities, religious convictions (and any other kind of convictions, misdemeanors or otherwise!), education, eye color, best friend, embarrassing moments, political leanings, profession, grades in school, the sorority she belonged to (yes, I think she joined a sorority, possibly Tri-Delt), and so on. It's an extensive list of questions and it's going to take a lot of time and thought for me to do it (which is why I'm stalling by writing this blog post).

If I'm going to understand what she wants, however, I've got to put in that effort now. In the long run, it will pay off. (The same goes for the other main characters, by the way, especially the two men in Kate's life. Did I say "two?" Hmm. Interesting.) So, here goes. Let's see, she's how tall? Hair color? . . . .

Exploring Scrivener for Windows

With one book being edited by a publisher and another being scrutinized by my agent, I need to be working on something, so I'm embarking on a new book project, one that I've been thinking about for a while. In my head, at least, it's a jumble of past and present, part historical, part contemporary, and that's going to involve two story lines plus two casts of characters. Complicated. So it struck me that I need to be a bit more organized as I approach this one than I was the last one.

Enter Scrivener for Windows, a program that I think is going to be a big help. I've done a preliminary outline with sketches of what each chapter will contain. I've done a list of characters for each of the two threads (color coded!) and have begun sketches for each of the characters. I've been doing research on the setting and history of the story's primary location, and have taken notes. And all of that is in easy-to-manage files within the program. I've even started finding photos of my characters and have pasted them into the program. I like the idea of being able to see pictures of the characters on the screen while I'm writing.

One thing I think I'm really going to like is the notecard feature. Right now each of my chapters has a notecard (or cluster of notecards) and they are tacked to a corkboard screen. The cards are color coded depending on whether the chapter takes place in the past or the present. But because I'm not sure yet in what sequence I want the chapters to appear, I'm especially pleased that I can move TEXT around by simply reordering the cards. Eventually, when I have things in the right order and have written all the chapters, I can export the text to a Word file for further processing and formatting. But I envision that being a fairly late stage of the game.

Scrivener for Windows is currently in Beta. It's release is supposed to be sometime in November, at which point I'll need to buy the program, but I think it will be worth it.

The New Yorker: "Tenth of December" by George Saunders

October 31, 2011: “Tenth of December” by George Saunders

This story is typical Saunders—funny and touching at the same time—with a Joycean epiphany at the end. And although it’s supposed to be behind the paywall, when I clicked on the link the whole story showed up, so you might be in luck.

Saunders gives us the odd voices of two odd characters, both of whom also hear voices. We get young Robin, an overweight kid with a way-overactive imagination, on his way to the pond in the park to do battle with the Nethers, tiny creatures who live in a stone wall and who might have kidnapped the girl he has a crush on who thinks his name is Roger. Also in the park is Donald Eber, a brain-cancer patient who is considering drowning himself in order to end the burden that he has become on his wife and kids.

Meanwhile, Robin discovers Eber’s abandoned coat—abandonment is a theme here—and sees the older man by the pond. So he picks up the coat and instead of going around the pond, he decides to take a shortcut across the ice. Uh oh. Bad idea. It’s not hard to guess what happens next, or what happens after that, or how—given that I’ve mentioned that epiphany—how the story ends.

So it’s not exactly a surprising story, and I’m not a big fan of the epiphany in modern stories, but the story is still enjoyable because of those two whacked-out voices.

Also, check out the Q&A with George Saunders.

Meta Blogging: Pushcart Prize Ranking

Today, Brevity's Nonfiction Blog has a guest post by yours truly that Dinty Moore calls Which Magazines Earn the Most Pushcart Prizes in Nonfiction? The post is a brief discussion of the latest wrinkle in my rankings of literary magazines based on the number of Pushcart Prizes and Special Mentions earned each year over a ten year period. The list began several years ago as a ranking for fiction. Brevity got interested when I recently created a new list for nonfiction. Anyway, you can go there, read all about it, and follow the links back here . . .

Tips for Writers: How to Publish A Short Story Collection

A friend of mine asked me recently if I’d written a blog post on the subject of getting a short story collection published. I don’t think I have, at least not one with much detail, so it seemed like a good subject for Tips for Writers.

Let’s assume that you’ve got a collection finished. Let’s also assume that you’d like the book published in the most prestigious place, with the most exposure and the most money for you. That would be one of the major trade publishers like Simon & Schuster or Random House. The major publishers do take on short story collections from time to time if they think they can sell them to the public—the author is a big name, the house is also publishing that writer’s novel, there is some other buzz about the book or the author. But these publishers are of the opinion that the reading public doesn’t buy story collections, and they may be right about that. So this ambition is a long shot, and your chances of succeeding are enhanced if you’ve also got a novel to sell. In any event, the first step on this road is finding an agent, because major publishers won’t deal with anyone but agents, who have become the gatekeepers for the industry.

Getting an agent is a whole story unto itself, and it isn’t easy. I did manage to get an agent for a story collection. She thought the book was just distinct enough (I call it a novel in stories) that a publisher might take an interest; she loved it and thought they would, too. But they didn’t, or didn’t love it enough to publish it. After two years of trying—all the major publishers and most of the next tier—she basically gave up.

So if you can’t get an agent or if your agent can’t sell the book to the big publishers, you’re left with independent, university, and small presses. And there are lots and lots of these presses. Finding one to publish your book is very similar to the agent search. You send out queries, sometimes with samples, sometimes without, and then you wait. You hope that someone will request a full manuscript, and then you wait some more. Someone makes an offer (you hope), and then you let the other publishers know about it and see if someone will make a better offer.

Until those other offers come in, though, you can also submit the manuscript to contests. There are a lot of these contests, such as the Iowa Short Fiction Contest and the Flannery O’Connor, but the competition is very tough because there are a lot of writers with story collection manuscripts.

But then, if you’re persistent and your book is good, you will eventually find a small press to take your collection.

This is essentially the path I followed—twice. With my first collection, In an Uncharted Country, I didn’t try very hard to get an agent because I knew that my book was unlikely to be attractive to bigger publishers. It’s a pretty quiet book and my publication credits (11 of the 12 stories had been published in magazines) were rather obscure. So, after a few rejections from agents (many of whom said, “Do you have a novel?”), I started submitting to small presses. It didn’t take long for Press 53 to ask for the book, and because they are committed to publishing short story collections I was very happy with them. The second book, my novel in stories, What the Zhang Boys Know, I thought had a chance with bigger publishers because (a) I called it a novel in stories and (b) the stories were better. And, in fact, the big houses took it seriously, but most of our rejections mentioned the fact that story collections were a tough sell, as if I didn’t know that already. In the end, though, I submitted to contests and small presses, and once again Press 53 was enthusiastic about the book. So it’s coming out from them in September 2012. I’m happy about that, and now I can turn my attention to the next book.

If you don’t find a publisher, you still have the option of self-publishing, which is getting easier to do all the time, and if you choose to make it an eBook instead of a print book, the costs of this approach are few. I don’t recommend this route if you want to have a career as a fiction writer, however. Keep looking for a traditional publisher, even a very small one.

2011 Nonfiction Pushcart Prize Ranking

[Note: the 2012 Rankings are now available. Go here.]

I am pleased to present the complete 2011 Nonfiction Pushcart Prize Ranking. This list, like the fiction list, which you can find here, is simple and objective. It covers ten years of Pushcart Prize anthologies and is based on a formula that awards points for Special Mentions and more points for Prizes. I use the Pushcart Prize for these rankings because the volume draws from a broad representation of the literary magazine world (although, unfortunately, with less regard than is warranted for online publications). I do not consider any other factors--circulation, payment, reputation--in this list.

I initially created the fiction list in order to aid my own submission strategy (submitting within tiers) and I've heard from readers that many do the same. There are other rankings out in the world that purport to do more than mine does, and that's great. Here's the list. Do with it what you will.

[Note that magazines that are closed are marked with (c). Magazines for which I have no information are marked with a question mark.]

2011	Magazine	2011 Score
1	Georgia Review	70
2	Orion	56
3	Agni	41
4	Fourth Genre	39
5	Gettysburg Review	37
5	Threepenny Review	37
7	Conjunctions	36
8	American Scholar	35
9	Sun	34
10	Iowa Review	30
11	New Letters	28
12	Missouri Review	26
13	Creative Nonfiction	25
13	Southern Review	25
15	Tin House	21
16	Hudson Review	20
16	Raritan	20
16	Shenandoah	20
19	River Teeth	17
20	Ploughshares	16
21	Brain, Child	15
21	Image	15
21	Michigan Quarterly Review	15
21	Salmagundi	15
21	Virginia Quarterly Review	15
26	Antioch Review	14
26	Colorado Review	14
26	Kenyon Review	14
29	Paris Review	13
30	Bellevue Literary Review	12
31	Boulevard	11
31	Ecotone	11
31	Poetry	11
31	Speakeasy ©	11
31	Third Coast	11
31	Witness	11
36	Five Points	10
36	TriQuarterly	10
36	ZYZZYVA	10
40	Ninth Letter	8
40	Northwest Review	8
40	Southwest Review	8
43	American Poetry Review	7
43	Harvard Review	7
43	New England Review	7
43	The Journal	7
43	Water-Stone Review	7
48	n+1	6
48	Palo Alto Review ?	6
48	Passages North	6
48	Pleiades	6
52	Arts & Letters	5
52	Fugue	5
52	Great River Review	5
52	In Character ©	5
52	Massachusetts Review	5
52	North Dakota Quarterly	5
52	Oregon Humanities	5
52	Republic of Letters	5
52	Shearsman	5
52	The Point	5
52	Yale Italian Poetry	5
52	Zoetrope: All Story	5
64	Doubletake ©	4
64	Parnassus	4
64	Sewanee Review	4
67	Alimentum	3
67	Fiction International	3
67	Gulf Coast	3
67	Hunger Mountain	3
67	Kyoto Journal	3
67	Manoa	3
67	North American Review	3
67	Post Road	3
67	World Literature Today	3
67	Yale Review	3
77	A Public Space	2
77	Alaska Quarterly Review	2
77	Another Chicago Magazine	2
77	Ascent	2
77	Asian American Writers Workshop	2
77	Believer	2
77	Bellevue Literary Press	2
77	Bellingham Review	2
77	Blackbird	2
77	Boston Review	2
77	Columbia Review	2
77	Connecticut Review	2
77	Florida Review	2
77	Hollins Critic	2
77	Hotel Amerika	2
77	Lapham's Quarterly	2
77	Narrative	2
77	Noon	2
77	Northern Lights (?)	2
77	Oxford American	2
77	Partisan Review ©	2
77	PMS	2
77	Provincetown Arts	2
77	Rain Taxi	2
77	Santa Monica Review	2
77	Writers Chronicle	2
103	42 Opus	1
103	American Interest	1
103	American Letters & Commentary	1
103	American Short Fiction	1
103	Arkansas Review	1
103	Asia Literary Review	1
103	Baffler	1
103	Bat City	1
103	Black Pearls	1
103	Blood Orange Review	1
103	Bomb	1
103	Brick	1
103	Callaloo	1
103	Canteen	1
103	Chautauqua	1
103	Chicago Review	1
103	Cimarron Review	1
103	Confrontation	1
103	Crazyhorse	1
103	Denver Quarterly	1
103	Divide ?	1
103	Epoch	1
103	Europa Editions	1
103	Event	1
103	Fiction	1
103	FreshYarn.com	1
103	Graywolf Press	1
103	Haystack Mountain	1
103	Healing Muse	1
103	High Country News	1
103	Idaho Review	1
103	Indiana University Press	1
103	Iron Horse Literary Review	1
103	Island ?	1
103	James White Review ?	1
103	Lit	1
103	Literary Imagination	1
103	Literary Review	1
103	Make ?	1
103	Marginalia ©	1
103	Memoir	1
103	Meridian	1
103	Milkweed Editions - Press	1
103	Minnesota Review	1
103	New Haven Review	1
103	New Ohio Review	1
103	On the Page	1
103	Ontario Review ©	1
103	Open City	1
103	Open Spaces	1
103	Other Voices ©	1
103	Pen America	1
103	Portland Magazine	1
103	Portland Review	1
103	Prairie Schooner	1
103	Prism	1
103	Relief	1
103	River City Publishing	1
103	River Styx	1
103	Rosebud	1
103	Rumpus	1
103	Seneca Review	1
103	SN Review	1
103	Southampton Review	1
103	Stone Canoe	1
103	Stranger	1
103	Subtropics	1
103	Tiferet	1
103	Under the Sun	1
103	University of Notre Dame Press	1
103	Vocabula Bound	1
103	Wag's Revue	1
103	War, Literature and The Arts	1
103	Weber Studies	1
103	Western Humanities Review	1
103	Willow Springs	1