Resources and Rants
Crowdsourced literary resources & bees in bonnets
Last week the Associated Writers and Writing Programs conference set up shop in Los Angeles’s convention center on Figueroa Street. Thousands of writers attended four days of literary panels, poetry and prose readings, and the conference’s sprawling book fair.
In the spirit of the conference, which brings out the good, the bad, and the. . . in many of us, I asked several writers to share writing-related resources and pet peeves.
From Colette Sartor:
Resources: Bill Wolfe’s Read Her Like an Open Book is one of my go-to sources for great new reads that inspire me to write. Becky Tuch’s
provides a wealth of publishing information and community support for those looking to publish in lit mags, and gives great insights into the MFA world.A major pet peeve: When describing women in their fifties, please, in the name of all that is holy, don't refer to them as "elderly." Women of this age make up a big chunk of the reading public, and they don't consider themselves elderly, not one bit. In fact, don't describe any woman solely through her age or her looks. Better to describe her in a way that illustrates who she is and what she wants or doesn't want (e.g., a frazzled middle school teacher who would rather drink Drano than read one more dead puppy poem).
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From Nina Schuyler (Substack:
)Pet peeve: Tired, so tired of hearing “but I was told to only write short sentences.” The abandoned long sentence that defies linearity, that sweeps and spirals and swoons, weeps in the corner.
Resource: Erika Krouse's Ranking of 500-ish Lit Mags for Short Fiction
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From Kathleen Rooney:
My pet peeve is secrecy around money—if everyone (including authors, agents, and editors) talked more openly about the dollar amounts attached to everything from individual pieces to advances to royalties, we’d all be better equipped to know what's possible, what's fair, what's unfair and what might need to be changed.
Resource: Heavy Feather Review's Where to Submit list.
From Frank Edwards:
Pet peeves: Getting an early start writing and not having the floodgates open until the last 30 minutes—and having a commitment that pulls you away. Why can't I harness that?
I've had a couple of negative reviews where the reviewers admitted they hadn't read past the first page because it wasn't what they expected. Really?
Resources: I tend to gorge a bit on craft books. Two brief ones I've found useful and have returned to more than once are Story Genius by Lisa Cron; and
's Refuse to Be Done.From R.L. Maizes:
My pet peeve is the lack of transparency in the publishing process. It can be harder for a writer to get information about their book from some large publishers than to pry a steak from a starving dog's mouth and as dangerous to try.
Resource: The fantastic craft book The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter, particularly the final essay, “Loss of Face,” which is about describing faces, and has influenced my writing.
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Anonymous:
It is very hard (if not impossible) to break through the tiers within the tier system when submitting to journals, and yet, those journals still hold submission periods and charge for submissions. Higher tier journals maybe take .00000001% of their slush (I don't have an actual stat, but it's low). Most of their writing comes from solicitations, connections, or agent placements. However, one or two months out of the year, they open their submissions and hundreds of writers submit and pay the $3 only to get the inevitable rejection. Once in a while, they might send a high-end rejection, so in the end, you're paying for a possible nicer-than-usual note from them, but the truth is, you had no chance. Most of the top-tier journals operate this way (solicitations, agent placements). If you do get into a top-tier journal, you’ve really beaten the odds.
Resource: Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell about novel revision is life-saving.
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From Sarah Tomlinson (
Substack):Resources: I’m often asked by aspiring writers how I’ve managed to overcome procrastination and writer’s block. Not to say I’m never visited by these little devils, but my years as a freelance music journalist for The Boston Globe, with multiple daily deadlines (and no income unless I hit them), cured me of any preciousness about my writing. Which helped me to cement the habit of sitting down and getting it done. That said, I’ve taken the most inspiration and support from (and therefore recommended and gifted the most) the perennial classic craft book: The War of Art. It’s such a straightforward and helpful examination of resistance and how we can trick ourselves into overcoming it and eventually form better creative habits.
Of course I have many talented writer friends with wonderful Substacks, and I often pull gems from them. But the newsletter I read most consistently and feel the most struck by is The Red Hand Files in which songwriter Nick Cave answers readers’ questions in a deeply candid, funny, and searching way. I’ve been profoundly moved by the rawness of the notes he receives from fans and the love and joy radiating from his responses. The Q&A format also reminds me of why I write (and read) – to be in conversation with others about the aspects of the human experience I care about the most.
Pet peeves: Hopefully none of you will ever experience this quirk, which is hardwired into my writing brain and cannot be shaken, even as it annoys me: I hate orphans (when a line breaks onto a new line with only a word or two, leaving almost a whole line of blank space). I have a total block against orphans and am compelled to rewrite all of my sentences to avoid them.
The only other person I’ve spoken to with this quirk is the wonderful short story writer Norman Lock (Love Among the Particles), who said he has found an upside: his verbs are more active because he employs the shortest possible versions, to tighten up his lines. The downside is that my pages tend to be very dense, with little white space, which I know can exhaust readers. I may need to give myself some intense exposure therapy while writing my next book. As always, I’m a work in progress!
Asking for a friend! This isn’t a pet peeve, so much as a query for our community of writers and editors: how can we continue to evolve the promotion process, so that new books find as many readers as possible, without authors feeling like they’ve failed (and will never publish again) if they don’t end up with a viral hit on their hands?
Almost all of my friends who’ve been lucky enough to publish in the past few years have expressed a feeling that they weren’t doing enough/getting the right things/finding readers beyond the small circle they’d already connected with on social media. What we once thought of as PR no-brainers—live book events, Goodreads, reviews in mainstream media outlets—have been disrupted by everything from Covid to shifts in online culture and the media landscape.
As someone who loves reading and writing books, I’d be thrilled to be part of a positive change that helps writers and readers find each other. But how? Bookfluencers? Substacks? Podcasts? Tea leaves? Magic eight balls? Open to any and all ideas!
Thanks for this! I especially liked (and agreed with) Colette Sartor's pet peeve regarding women in their 50s and describing women generally. My pet peeve back in grad school was guys who described women solely by their age (young) and looks (beautiful). It was the female students who'd occasionally include an "elderly" woman (usually sentimentalized).
Writers = equal parts pleasant and peevish!