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Editors' Picks--Week of July 12

Editors' Picks--Week of July 12

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This week's highlights from the Community Blog. Lost and Found: The Personal Perils of Becoming a Published Writer by Terri Kirby Erickson As thrilling as it has been to achieve my dream of becoming a published poet, there have been difficult personal adjustments to make along the way. After the publication of my first book, Thread Count, a relative of mine who has been wildly successful in his chosen profession, warned me to be prepared to “lose friends.” Quickly, he revised that statement by saying, “Well, not real friends—but people you thought were your friends.” Read more here. Next Up on The Lit Coach's Guide to The Writer's Life by Erin Reel Editorial Consultant, Marcela Landres will be our guest expert next week on The Lit Coach’s Guide to The Writer’s Life. She'll share some valuable tips on how beginning authors can find and promote their unique voice in the sea of commercial fiction published annually. Ms. Landres, a former editor with Simon and Schuster, is the author of the must-read e-book, How Editors Think: The Real Reason They Rejected You. Read more here. Me Thinks They Doth Protest Too Much by Joanna Salvo Recently, Irin at Jezebel put a really good post together about The Daily Show’s Woman Problem. It’s not hard to notice (and lots of people have written about this) that late night is a boy’s world. The Daily Show is no different from any other late night show. Women are not very visible, especially as writers and correspondents. The Emmy nominations which were released this morning, shows how few women are working as writers. The Daily Show which was nominated in the outstanding writing category has two women listed on its writing staff and 15 guys. Last year there was only one woman so they increased the percentage of female writers from 6.25 percent to 11.7 percent. Better. Still sucks. And if you think The Daily Show is alone in its spare number of female writers think again. The other shows nominated for best writing include The Colbert Report which has 2 women writers on a staff of 16. Bill Maher has ZERO women writers on a staff of 10. Conan O’Brien has ZERO women writers on a staff of 19. The best show for women writers is Saturday Night Live which had 7 women on a staff of 28. But this is not a problem, right? Read more here. Writing Under the Gun by Marilyn Fried I am completing day 9 of a NaNoWriMo for July. I can definitely see the advantage of doing this in November when EVERYONE is doing it. As a first-time fiction writer, here is one thing I've learned so far doing this novel in 30 days project: don't write a plot that contains history that must be verified! I have part of my story happening in Russia during the Moscow Theatre hostage crisis. So that means I have to get certain dates and facts right because it is a fairly recent event (2002). Why didn't I write a story where historical accuracy wasn't so necessary? Read more here. The Work-Life Balance for Women Authors by Amanda Craig THE LIFE-WORK BALANCE Now that the school holidays have begun, I am once again pondering the life-work balance. I suppose everyone is confronted with this; as a writer you are ideally suited to bringing up children. Or are you? Read more here. Miscarriage and the Beauty of the Ordinary with Tonja Robins by Tania Pryputniewicz Can you talk about the process of writing the poem, A Letter Home? And how you arrived at the imagery? After the miscarriage I was in Spain and had a chance to spend a week on the southern coast. So the imagery I owe to the landscape: the dark gray rock jutting into the Atlantic, the wild statice, the goats all struck me as beautiful, rugged, lonely. The dead fish reminded me of the miscarried potential life. I made notes at the time but didn't draft until a few months later, back in the US. Read more here.