"What made my first year of full-time freelancing so happy, besides not ever having to ride the subway during rush hour, wasn’t anything specific about what my workdays were like. I wasn’t accomplishing much, I was wasting a lot of time, and a lot of the time I was bored. Most days, my work did not go well and I felt dejected about my actual writing. But I still felt good and hopeful, because all these potential paths seemed possible. Everything seemed possible. Unpleasant things had happened to me but I still had never been majorly unlucky. This sense of infinite possibility was like a drug; hooked on it, I clung to it even after it should have been clear that I needed to move on, I couldn’t just stay poised to do something forever."

Ahhhhh, this post of Emily’s. [Is so good.] (via katieheaney)

Jesus, My Struggling Writer Friends Never Shut Up! →

So funny and so brilliant.

Heather Havrilesky, “Ask Polly: Jesus, My Struggling Writer Friends Never Shut Up!,” The Awl

Questions, anyone? →

"

Editing is everything. Writing a first draft is akin to moving a big block of marble into a sculptor’s studio. It’s hard, and it requires some finesse, but mostly it’s just heavy lifting. It isn’t art. The art happens when the marble starts getting chipped away to find the Pieta within. And that is the role of the editor — with luck, in concert with the writer.

Writers don’t need to roll over to every change an editor demands. Standing up for one’s work is fine. But writers whose first impulse is resistance, who swoon and gnash their teeth over any changes, are making a serious mistake. Writing is collaborative, and that second pair of eyeballs is as important, in many ways, as the first.

"

Dan Baum, journalist

Flavorwire announces a short fiction contest. Full details here.

Flavorwire is thrilled to announce its first-ever short fiction contest. In honor of May’s National Short Story Month, we’re offering a prize of $500 for one outstanding short story. To enter, simply send a story of 5,000 words or less — in the body of a message, not as an attachment — along with a brief author bio and all relevant contact information to flavorwirefiction@gmail.com by Friday, May 17. Flavorwire Literary Editor Emily Temple will judge all entries and announce the results on the 24th. We’ll publish the winning story, along with a handful of honorable mentions, on Flavorwire throughout the final week of May.

NYC-based writers, want to learn how to write and publish a personal essay? Then sign up for my class Get Paid to Write About Your Favorite Topic—Yourself. Get 20% off when you enroll by Wed, May 22nd and enter discount code EARLY20. Hope to see you there!

Get Paid to Write About Your Favorite Topic—Yourself
May 29 – May 29, 2013
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm EST
New York, NY
Sign up now!
Cost: $50 $40 when you enroll by May 22nd and enter discount code EARLY20

Image courtesy of Giphy

scottcheshire:

Claire Messud talks with the Tottenville Review about her new and wonderful novel The Woman Upstairs, claustrophobia, and Katy Perry (among other things).

“In the list of things we should be angry about, the manipulations of the media is one that we seem to be strangely docile in accepting. I don’t quite understand why we don’t have any ire about that…”

Click on the photo above to read more.

"The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I’ve never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He’s too busy writing something. If he isn’t first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn’t got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death."

William Faulkner (via bookhermit)

Oh my God, so true!

View high resolution

newyorker:

Alexander Nazaryan on Henry Miller, a Brooklyn writer who hated Brooklyn: http://t.co/xD6j2Bqyoh

"As partygoers arrive, ask them to write their name on a slip of paper and place it in one of two jars labeled with the possible genres. Then at the end of the party, pick out a name from the “correct guess” jar and give the winning guest a small gift, a galley or two hundred bookmarks with the address of your website. Give everyone else instructions on how to write an Amazon or Goodreads review when the book is out. These can be printed ahead of time and folded into the shape of a crane."

Jessica Francis Kane, “How to Host a Genre-Reveal Party,” McSweeney’s

Ha! So clever and delightful.