Best rejection yet
Topic: Writing
Came from The Paris Review last week. It was a standard, flimsy rejection note that says:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to The Paris Review. We regret that we are unable to make use of it at this time.

Your sincerely,
The Editors.

What makes it special and makes me feel great is that someone printed, in blue pen:

Dear Mr. Portocarrero:
WELL DONE; ENTERTAINING.

That's a lot of letter to be spelling out. Bless this person's heart.

George Saunders
Topic: Writing
I was reading an interview with him over at slushpile and, although I may have already posted this stuff, I will post it again. That's how much I like the answers:

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can't-live-without writing tip you would offer to aspiring authors?

Saunders: Keep going. Your subconscious mind is a lot smarter than you are. Just keep giving it a chance and in time it may reward you. Get out of the way a little bit, have fewer ideas about what kind of writer you are and what it is you are going to accomplish. Find out what kind of writer you are and be prepared to accept that writer, no matter how different he/she is from what you'd hoped.

Slushpile: What is your single-best, most-important, can't-live-without publishing tip you would offer to aspiring authors struggling to break into print?

Saunders: I know this advice feels facile but honestly - stop worrying about getting published. Think about writing something that comes from the heart and that you would feel unashamed to show to your greatest historical writing hero. Maybe we can't get there but I think what every reader wants to read is someone in the act of swinging for the fences, unselfconsciously, with joy and abandon and the highest possible hopes. Who could resist that, right?

That's great stuff.

DFW in PW
Topic: Writing
I was pleasantly surprised when I received my most current issue of Poets & Writers. There is a story in there about DFW and the futile attempts of the writer to get in touch with him to ask him, what he feels, are important questions. Questions meant to reveal more about the man than we know.

Things we, as fans, are curious about.

But DFW is a quiet guy, and apparently won't be doing much press for his new book. He still manages to write a nice piece on what it's like to be a DFW fan.

Really well done and very entertaining.

Learning for Dummies
Topic: Writing
I was going through this website when it all of the sudden hit me: why do I have to go online to find this type of information? I'm a student in a Master of Writing program - shouldn't I be learning this stuff there?

But I'm not, and the crazy thing is this website is only repeating stuff that everyone out there who writes already knows. The question is, why isn't it taught to the people that want to learn, that want to become writers?

There's something wrong with the way people are being taught. Something is terribly wrong. Very rarely will I leave (or have I left) a classroom feeling like I've learned something useful that I can go out and do in the real world (some Photoshop classes and Math stuff excluded).

Someone was telling me the other day that law school is really two years longer than the program is because where you really do the learning is during your first two years of working. The school part, he said, was basically just to week out the hard workers from those that wouldn't be able to cut it.

That's ridiculous.

It also has something to say about the popularity of the "for Dummies" and "Idiot's Guide to" books. Sure we're lazy, but these books seem to rely more on practicality than theory - hence why people turn to them despite taking high level classes or courses (I'm reminded of a time when Ben Affleck was getting into his convertible, a paparazzi taking video the whole time, and he was asked if the book in the back seat was his, he looked back and smirked, "Yeah, that's mine." And off he went. The book? Acting for Dummies.).

Why can't the teachers in the classroom be both practical and whatever it is they do in there when they're not being practical (theoretical?)?

I think they should be, and I think I could be - at least for certain subjects I'm comfortable with.

And that's what I'll do if and when I decide to teach a class.

It's what I did when I coached baseball, and that opened my eyes to the fluff that I had to wade through in order to actually learn a lot of the stuff that, in the end, I ended up learning on my own through trial and error.


(the end of this post kind of went in a different direction, but whatever, it's a blog, not a term paper (thank god))

PS I just spell-checked this post (something I should do more often) and it didn't recognize the word "blog" - thought it should be "bog."
Irony, she is a good thing.

Write a Novel in a Month
Topic: Writing
I first heard about this a year ago but never found the website. Well, here it is.

You sign on and write a 50,000-word (170 pages) novel along with thousands of other people around the world.

The idea is to give you the motivation by setting a goal, a deadline, and by letting you know thousands of people are also doing what you're doing.

Too bad it was in november.

Blog and Notebooks
Topic: Writing
The amount of stuff I've written both on the Blog and in the original Notebooks has been down considerably for a while now. It's really not that hard to see why.

When you're in a relationship you have someone to talk to every single day, either on the phone, in person, or through email. What this shows is how writing (for me, at least) in the notebooks and on the blog isn't about saying "Hey, look at me!" It's more about getting things off my chest. Things that I think of and want to express. Nowadays I just tell Mindy about them and I'm freed from the pestering of that idea. There is no need to write it down anywhere, it's already been expressed.