Author estates: Super complicated

We all know how effed Steig Larsson's estate is. Well, it turns out his problem is not so uncommon. The answer, of course, is to 1) write a will, 2) never produce anything anyone cares about, or 3) leave it all to me, and I will milk every last penny out of your blood, sweat, and tears.

Joyce Carol Oates on widowhood

Joyce Carol Oates writes in the Atlantic about her first year as a widow, and it is one of the sadder things I have read. She writes:

My job at the university is to impersonate “Joyce Carol Oates.”

Strictly speaking, I am not impersonating this individual, since “Joyce Carol Oates” doesn’t exist, except as an author-identification. On the spines of books shelved in certain libraries and bookstores you will see OATES but this is a descriptive term, this is not a noun.

This is not a person. This is not a life.

A writing-life is not a life.

Absolutely worth the read.

The queasiness of the MFA

Lionel Shriver did an interview with Big Think in which she slams the "indulgent middle class gestalt" of getting an MFA. While she herself has one, she says:

I sometimes feel, in retrospect, I should have gotten a proper education in something like history....If I'm going to be honest, what I really needed in my early twenties was an audience.

She finds "something unwholesome" in awarding a degree that, for most students, has a best case scenario that allows you to teach classes for others to get that same degree--an issue prevalent in most higher education humanities and art degrees.

Sexy politicians, emotional scars

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus, reader types, but I was laid low last week by these erotic excerpts from novels written by politicians. These are super, super disturbing, and may make you too need a week off. Consider yourself warned!

And, of course, all thanks and shame to CKHB, for sending this along. Thanks, I think...

Casper the friendly ghost(writer)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every out of office US president needs to put out a memoir, and can use a little ghostwriter help. And, it turns out, he may be inclined to pick his speechwriter who is all of 28 and who started as an unpaid White House intern.

American dream coming true for someone? Check. Boozy afternoon for those of us who haven't managed to luck our ways into ridiculously sweet writing projects? Also check. Join me, won't you?

Occupation: Optimist

Margaret Atwood, prolific author and adorable lady, may write about really depressing things, but she says she's still an optimist.

"Anybody who writes a book is an optimist," the much-honored writer says, with a dry impishness, in a phone interview. "First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that?"

Hurrah to you, optimists! Who says being an aspiring writer isn't fun?

Writing for a living is hard, for all new reasons

At the LA Times, Dani Shapiro writes an article about how it used to be that writing as a career was difficult because of the time commitment involved for success, and now you don't even get that. She writes:

The emphasis is on publishing, not on creating. On being a writer, not on writing itself. The publishing industry -- always the nerdy distant cousin of the rest of media -- has the same blockbuster-or-bust mentality of television networks and movie studios. There now exist only two possibilities: immediate and large-scale success, or none at all.

Bleak? Yes. Truthful? Absolutely. Sure, a major house can support the literary equivalent of Arrested Development, and keep saying, "Everyone loves it! It'll break out!" But eventually, all those jerkwads who looooove the show but don't bother to actually watch it while it's on (or buy the book when it first comes out) snowball and everything goes out of business. And, for realsies, the Arrested Development model almost never happens, in books or on TV.

This brings me to the inevitable question: if you're not doing it for profit or being published, voluntarily or otherwise, are you still a writer? This question is posed in relation to Salinger--he wrote a handful of books and then stopped publishing (but we can now assume kept writing). Can you quit being a writer, or is it like being in the Mob? And is it the act of writing that makes you count, or the recognition of credibility through being published?

I think I'm turning Japanese, in order to write my cellphone novel

15 year-old "Bunny" wrote a three volume novel on her cellphone, which has been turned into a paperback and has sold over 110,000 copies and grossed more than $611,000. She's a Japanese high school student, who doesn't want her friends to know she's been writing because "It's embarassing." Dude, seriously, all of my writing profits are also an embarrassment. An embarrassment of riches! (Zing.)

The moral here is that I need to become a 15 year Japanese girl. This is only doable through MySpace or creepy chat rooms. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

"Would you go to the doctor and have him take out your spleen for nothing?"

A wise man once said, "If you're good at something, never do it for free." I know I've been guilty of this sin, but, damnit, no more, thanks to Harlan Ellison and his delicious rant below.

This video is NSFW, based both on Ellison's language and the incredible bubbly feeling you will get as he threatens to burn Warner Brothers to the ground for not sending him a free DVD with his interview on it.

I might make "What is Warner Brothers? Out with an eye patch and a tin cup on the street? Fuck no!" my cellphone ring.

The beginning of the end

Yesterday we saw a list of novel last lines, and today is a list of firsts. Check out these sweet starters.

I actually like this group better than the enders of yesterday—they're just, you know, better.

The internet has punctuation?

The answer is yes. Check out this chart, comparing regular punctuation to internet punctuation. The difference is that the internet sucks at punctuation. Please note that:

While "You have cancer of the :" may be the most efficient way to deliver a diagnosis of colon cancer over Instant Messenger, one should strive for clarity when using punctuation.

Punctuation and grammar are here to help, friends. Don't be anti-punctuation. That shit gets you e-mocked for e-ternity.

How can we reach these kids? Slang!

I know everyone wants to know how we can reach these kids. And we do it by bastardizing the language of classics to make them more approachable. But don't worry, it's not slang that's the problem, it's that modern slang is lame, and ye olde slang is hip:

[T]here is a difference between idiom and modern slang in literature. Shakespeare's use of slang opened up the world of the theatre to all of the audience, displaying the mental agonies of the Prince of Denmark to the most boisterous groundling and bringing the horseplay of Dogberry and co to the attention of the most cerebral courtier. Modern slang is different, being cut through with dark knowing humour and packing a linguistic punch, as the Guardian's recent compilation of 1950s slang bears witness.

When Shakespeare used slang he was opening up language to the masses, but when you do it you're insulting art. I tried to come up with some good slang for comic effect, but it didn't really take. Feel free to contribute your own slang take on classics in the comments.

Some people still use typewriters, also mimeographs

Ok, the mimeograph part was a joke. But many authors heart their typewriters. Says Frederick Forsythe:

"I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again," he points out. "And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure."

Touche to you, sir. The main perk I see in a typewriter is no internet, no solitaire (spider or otherwise), no distractions (no this blog is not one massive distraction from potentially more important work, hush). That said, no one would write me comments if this blog was typewriter based. So huzzah technology—you are more useful than not!

Typography? Really?

I cannot believe I read this whole article on typography, although it does feed my theory that the New York Times needs to stop pretending to deliver news.

Among the things typographers think about:

Choosing an inappropriate typeface is one problem. Applying one inaccurately is another. Sadly for type nuts, movies often offend on both counts. Take “Titanic,” in which the numbers on the dials of the ship’s pressure gauges use Helvetica, a font designed in 1957, some 45 years after the real “Titanic” sank.

I don't really get the love of font (at all), but hey, who am I to judge hobbies? Especially when I spend my free time writing...this...oh.

How good was Darwin's first draft?

I would tell you, if I could read his handwriting. Maybe you can tell me, because I hear that:

The Darwin Manuscripts Project will place online about 10,000 high-quality images of Darwin’s scientific manuscripts and notes. These pages include 34 of the 36 known and located draft leaves of Origin, gathered together for the first time since Darwin wrote his seminal book.

Funny, I couldn't find the introduction to Origin of Species pushing intelligent design in those 10,000 images. It must have gotten lost.

Harlequin will reject you and then publish you anyway

Oh yea, you heard that right. Harlequin is launching a new imprint, Harlequin Horizons, for self-publishing romance writers. PW writes:

[A]uthors whose manuscripts have been rejected by Harlequin will be made aware of the Harlequin Horizons option and authors who sign with Author Solutions will be given the opportunity to be published under the Harlequin Horizons imprint.

Now, unfortunately, you will have to pay for the service, but you can be a published Harlequin author!

Harlequin is delving into a whole new aspect market, with this self-pubbed imprint and their recent launch of their e-book only imprint. Romance-writing ladies and gentlemen, have at it.

Computers hate your writing

England is so over making people read the essays students write. Instead they have a computer program that analyzes the essays, and you know what? It sucks at its job (womp womp, computer).

It tried to analyze some Churchill, but "didn’t understand the purpose of the speech." A politician talking? Purposeless? Well...ok, computer. You can slide on that. Passages from A Clockwork Orange were "deemed incomprehensible," as well, although that may have had something to do with the Nasdat involved.

The program also gave Hemingway below average, which, you know, shame on it. But the worst part?

It is already in use in America, where some children have learnt to write in a style which the computer appreciates, known as "schmoozing the computer".

No, children, you're supposed to schmooze your teachers, by bringing them apples and sucking up, thus making yourselves unpopular and setting the world up for more teen movies. These are time honored traditions!

I know this is the audience to which I can say: if you're putting in the effort to write something, you at least hope a person will actually read it (no offense to my robot followers).

E-erotica is e-rousing

Harlequin has finally come to grips with the fact that its covers are super embarassing, and is launching an e-imprint, Carina Press. I for one applaud this move away from making people admit what they're reading in public. They say:

Carina Press will publish a wide variety of genre fiction aimed at women including romance, erotica, family sagas, science fiction and mysteries.

I firmly believe that the greatest good an e-reader can do is to hide my reading habits from the public. And Carina Press, bless its heart, is doing all it can to protect my fragile, fragile reputation with strangers.

And for you romance writers (hello!), the imprint is looking for short stories, genre fiction, and full novels.Submit away!

Please sir, can I have some more (sales)?

The economy sucks, and publishing is a dinosaur of an industry. A plus B equals a lot of manuscripts getting orphaned.

Editors are always moving from house to house, but with the current economic "situation" more are jumping ship (or walking the plank) than usual, leaving beind projects that they acquired but that no one else has the time or the inclination to pick up. Some of these are great lyrical works, magnum opuses (opusi?) that would have changed the world and sold really well with the proper help. Most of them are mid-list filler titles that were acquired to make up numbers.

The article says that you can overcome the bad sales and reputation left by orphan-itis by writing under a pseudonym or getting a new hobby slash career. The moral here: writing is a crap career.

Octogenarians authors don't feel the love

Robert McCrum hates on older authors, saying their work starts to take a nosedive with age. He writes:

If most writers' reputations are made, or at least begun, before the age of 40, then very few novelists put many runs on the scoreboard after 70. Arguably, they can even start to damage their reputations, as anguished fans concede that their idols have feet of clay.

I think the argument McCrum is trying to make is that a lot of great authors have great first works, and after that pretty much everyone tanks. That perhaps "people run out of ideas eventually, especially after three decades as a writer."

I don't think an 80 year old is any more likely to write something terrible than a 20 year old (which is to say, most people's books are terrible regardless of age. Except for your novel, reader. That one is great. That guy you hate? His is terrible). Thoughts?