Here it is, Q- Philes– John Vaillant’s The Tiger: a True Story of Vengeance and Survival is finally out this week. It is better than good– my favorite book of the year so far, and a likely classic in my rare favorite genre, that which documents (to use a book title) “the edge of the …
Tag: Writing
Modern Fears
From Schneier on Security: the winning entry in contest he suggested, a litany of modern fears, in the style of the late great Edward Gorey: The Gashlycrumb Terrors, by Laura A is for anthrax, so deadly and white. B is for burglars who break in at night. C is for cars that, with minds of …
Progress: My Days These Days
How I am doing, adapted from a few letters to friends and relatives: basically well if sometimes a bit frustrated, with only occasional moments of terror (;-) I was never a couch potato before, but my undiagnosed symptoms slowed to stopped me for almost a year and I had to work to get back. Now …
RIP Les Line
Les Line, the writer and editor who made the (old) Audubon into what might have been the best nature magazine in the world, has died. Audubon has been very and appropriately kind in its obit. It doesn’t mention that they fired him in ’91 to change the magazine’s direction. My friend Matt Miller of The …
Tips from the Guardian
The Guardian recently printed a series of ten tips on writing each from a multitude of well- known writers. There must be hundreds, ranging from useful to witty to odd, and you should read them all for amusement if nothing else. Lib typed out a few I found useful below. Hilary MantelWrite a book you’d …
Letter to a young writer
I recently wrote the letter below to an incredibly talented but unhappy young writer who was doubting his abilities. It occurred to me that it had some general applications so I am reproducing it here, slightly modified: First of all, you are NOT a bad writer at all; you may be a brilliant one. What …
How to write
This whole thing is so funny and true I can hardly excerpt. But I’ll try: “Find that single cartoon frame from “Peanuts” that you keep in a box somewhere, the one in which Snoopy is reading a publisher’s rejection letter for his novel that goes, “Has it ever occurred to you that you may be …
Writers & Debt
An excellent Read- The- Whole- Thing piece by Megan McArdle in the Atlantic: Sample: “…writers are, as a class, extraordinarily at risk. They spend their twenties, and often their thirties, living paycheck to paycheck. They are extremely well educated, and all that education is not only expensive, but builds expensive habits. You end up with …
Honored
Prairie Mary has just written a post that mentions us most favorably. I’m blushing. As we try to see through the fog to what will happen in publishing, we need such thought. BTW Penelope Reedy once printed my essay- with- recipe “Private Reconciliation Chile”, which also appears in On The Edge of the Wild.
Writers’ Woes
Christina Nealson sends this grim item from salon about the state of mainstream publishing. “…On Dec. 3, now known as “Black Wednesday,” several major American publishers were dramatically downsized, leaving many celebrated editors and their colleagues jobless. The bad news stretches from the unemployment line to bookstores to literature itself. “It’s going to be very …