The APRIL issue of BookIsh Plaza eZine is out now!
BookIsh Plaza is your online bookshop for (Dutch)Caribbean literature.
In this issue:
Read & share the eZine. The next one will appear in May.
BOOKISH PLAZA eZINE nr.61 APRIL 2017
Visit BookIsh Plaza for our New Arrivals!
Do Shy People Make the Best Writers?The self-addressed envelope, which email has since rendered obsolete, used to be the shy writer’s salvation. It let them receive a “yes” or “no” via the mailbox, without having to network or schmooze editors, or talk to anyone else at all. Years later, when he was the New Yorker’s star writer, White said with feeling: “Magazines that refuse unsolicited manuscripts strike me as lazy, incurious, self-assured, and self-important.” No wonder that his favorite play was Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, the title character of which ghost-writes witty and eloquent letters for someone else. And only a shy person like White would have written about New York as the city that could bestow “on any person who desires such queer prizes… the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.”
White’s shyness runs all the way through his classic guide to writing, The Elements of Style (1959). He based this on an earlier guide written by Will Strunk, his old professor at Cornell, which he admired as an essay on the “nature and beauty of brevity.” Good writing did not offer the writer’s opinions gratuitously, The Elements of Style ruled, because that would imply that “the demand for them is brisk, which may not be the case.” For White, the best prose combined simplicity and self-concealment. Writing was, he wrote in 1964, “both a mask and an unveiling”—especially for the personal essayist, “who must take his trousers off without showing his genitals.” A writer’s voice was a vehicle for disguised egotism, he felt, and tact and taste were vital parts of the disguise.
Read further @ The Daily Beast
How much do you read?
For most of my adult life I read maybe five books a year — if I was lucky. I’d read a couple on vacation and I’d always have a few slow burners hanging around the bedside table for months.
And then last year I surprised myself by reading 50 books. This year I’m on pace for 100. I’ve never felt more creatively alive in all areas of my life. I feel more interesting, I feel like a better father, and my writing output has dramatically increased. Amplifying my reading rate has been the domino that’s tipped over a slew of others.
I’m disappointed that I didn’t do it sooner.
Why did I wait 20 years?
Well, our world today is designed for shallow skimming rather than deep diving, so it took me some time to identify the specific changes that skyrocketed my reading rate. None of them had to do with how fast I read. I’m actually a pretty slow reader.
Here’s my advice for fitting more reading into your own life, based on the behaviors that I changed:
Read further @ Harvard Business Review
Sensitivity Readers Are A New Front Line In Helping Authors With Their CraftWhat’s a well-meaning contemporary author seeking to portray a diverse world in her fiction to do? Several recent articles suggest a surprising answer: Hire a sensitivity reader to edit the manuscript.
In an excellent reported piece for Slate last week, Katy Waldman sketches out the uses and potential drawbacks of the practice. Sensitivity readers function as primary readers of a work in progress ― but while a traditional editor would read with a view for overall quality, a sensitivity reader focuses on the accuracy and potential offensiveness of a specific minority group’s portrayal. To ensure a Korean-American family is being depicted sensitively and authentically, an author might hire a Korean-American reader; to vet the characterization of a protagonist who uses a wheelchair, an author might hire a reader with the same disability.
Read further @ Huffington Post
NELL ZINK: HOW TO BECOME1. Examine your motives
2. Arrange financing
3. Write a bad novella
4. Don’t publish the bad novella
5. Think of a plot and characters
6. Write your debut
7. Never worry about style
8. Get an agent
9. Sell it
10. Write another one
Read further @ Literary Hub
7 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD DATE A READER1.Readers are less stressed
2.Readers have more empathy
3.Readers have a great memory
4.Readers have a big, um, vocabulary
5.Readers are passionate
6.You know what gift to give a reader
7.Readers are better at sex
Read further @ BookRiot
The MARCH issue of BookIsh Plaza eZine is out now!
BookIsh Plaza is your online bookshop for (Dutch)Caribbean literature.
In this issue:
Read & spread the eZine. The next one will appear in April.
BOOKISH PLAZAeZINE nr. 60 MARCH 2017
Visit BookIsh Plaza for our New Arrivals!
The Bestseller Experiment: can you deliberately write a blockbuster book?Mark Stay and Mark Desvaux are picking up clues from publishers and authors in a new podcast, while they go about trying to write the next bestseller
Everyone may have a book in them, but what about a bestselling one? It would seem obvious that the big-name authors are going to go straight to the top of the charts, but periodically a book comes out of nowhere that captures the imagination — and the public’s money — to become a break-out hit.
But is there actually a formula for writing a bestseller? Mark Stay and Mark Desvaux think think there might be, and they’ve given themselves one year to make it happen.
Stay has some form in publishing: he works for Orion and has writing chops, having written the screenplay and resulting novel for the movie Robot Overlords, which was released last year.
Read further @ The Guardian
THIRTY-THREE THOUGHTS (PLUS A FEW QUESTIONS) ON BOOKS AND READINGWhat are your thoughts on books and reading? Why do you read? I mean what do you hold to be self-evident and true about books and reading? Here are some thoughts on books, reading, and their importance.
Read further @ Book Riot
How to Be a Better Writer: 6 Tips From Harvard’s Steven PinkerU want 2B a better writer?
Good writing is often looked at as an art and, frankly, that can be intimidating. No need to worry. There are rules — even science — behind writing well.
Our brain works a particular way; so what rules do we need to know to write the way the brain best understands?
To find out the answer, check out the 6 tips by Steven Pinker:
Read futher @ Time
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