Short Story Lives
by Tish & Patrick, September 3, 2010
The couple that reads together….Print or Pixels, the NYT (9/2/10) writes that couples are choosing both, opting to read side by side old school and wired-in. Booksellers have taken note and are bundling e-books with free print books. Free! I’m clinging onto my paper but one argument in the Times’ piece got my attention. One e-reader reluctantly noticed that the e-readers are “easier on the eyesight as people get older.” That’s the first argument that makes sense to me as I hide my grey lock under my browner hair. But then there is my 17 year-old son, one year away from his launch asking me to hold onto all his favorite kid books from Dr. Seuss to Harry Potter. Ok, he does want the latest Kindle too… but allow me to feel good that right now tucked under his arm is a battered copy of Anna Karenina.
by Tish & Patrick, July 11, 2010
“Love is a verb.” A lesson Jane Green learned as she helped her close friend Heidi deal with stage 4 cancer. Jane said that it is all too easy to say, “call me if you need me.” She learned that love requires that you do more, “It’s all about the doing.” She cooked meals everyday for Heidi and her family and then wrote about the journey through her characters in her newest book, Promises to Keep.
JANE GREEN launched The Writers’ Room last Friday night,with a talk on writing that was inspirational as well as informative. Then she stayed for a long Q/A AND signed copies of her latest bestselling novel, Promises to Keep. She is such a generous person and I must add, lovely.
Here are some highlights from her talk.
“I never plot beyond the first third. By then my characters will have intruded and changed everything.
“ (photo of Kristi Hill, Prill Boyle, Penny Pearlman)
“Finding the emotional honesty in yourself will always connect to readers.”
“It is a fatal mistake to show your work to everyone you know.”
“It takes tremendous discipline to just show up and write whether you feel like it or not.”
“I usually start my book with characters, taking visual inspiration from people I see…. characters will tell their own stories.”
“Don’t always edit yourself. You always think your writing is rubbish. You are always going to second guess yourself. Keep writing and get to the end.”
“It’s a job.”
(Photo of Jane with Terry Wight.)
Jane believes in sending out your manuscript to multiple agents. She sent her first book to 13 agents and 9 wanted it!
“I LOVE MY LIFE.” And her family who came with her sitting in the front row. Thank you Jane for giving us a wonderful evening.
(Marcia Goodgame Logan, Keith Whalley and Jane)
(Mary Lou, Marcia, Jane)
Thanks for coming!
by Tish & Patrick, June 15, 2010
This photo appeared in WestportNow.com
by Tish & Patrick, June 4, 2010
The entire article is posted on The Editing Company website.
If you’re at all interested in the future of publishing, read on: Book Expo is the publishing industry trade show; it’s a huge circus celebration of print media, attended by publishers, agents, librarians, book vendors of every stripe, technology mavens and, of course, legions of hopeful authors. The venue includes a vast maze of publishers’ and national promotional booths, informational seminars and quasi-advertising presentations (by the likes of Google), and a great tidal swell of self-agrandizing speeches and signings. Note: the Keynote Address this year—at an extra admission cost— was by that publishing giant Barbara Steisand. 
I go to this granfalloon to sniff the zeitgeist and get a grip on how to better help writers who might want to publish. Here’s the upshot: heavy breathing over next year’s Big Books written by Big Names; a strophe/antistrophe of moaning/soothsaying over the changes wrought by technology; and a undertow of confusion as the power of the industry is ripped from the grip of the Lords of Publishing, who had, for the past four centuries or so, controlled authors and audiences alike from their Dark Towers. As I noticed last year, there was a great divide between those jaded potentates in the Towers of Old Publishing and those wry jokesters on the information highway of the New Technology.
Old Publishing
Up above in the publishing monoliths—the editors and publishers, the print journalists, the agents, and all the hard copyists— there was both denial and strategy.
Denial: Is book technology that has served so well from scroll to bestseller for 6,000 years really going the way of the horse and buggy? No doubt.
Agents, publishers and their ilk have dwindled in number by more than 2/3 in the past 15 years. Libraries are closing in the economic downturn, and the indie bookstore has been eradicated faster than polio in the 50s.
Yet, from the Tower, the Lords continue to believe in a push model—the central supplier controlled economy—of the industry: which means the authors and customers will still come to centralized power centers hoping to get editorial and fabrication skills. The Olde Potentates believed they were still fully clothed, but the winds of change had blown their last garments away when the Ipad hit the market.
Next Topics: The Truth about the Marketplace, The Google Model, E-Books, The Authors’ Position.
by Tish & Patrick, May 24, 2010
The four powerful women of Women in Power are amazing. (Margaret Wagner, Ellen Mahoney, Carolina Fernandez & Lisa Wexler.) They generously organize networking events to educate us and to support us in all our new ventures in life. They did it again last Thursday night. Margaret Wagner of Bedroommatters.com (one of our writers) invited me to attend. At the last minute I was asked to join the panel while we waited for Carey Thornton of Dutton and Yfat Gendell of Foundry Literary Media to arrive. The MC, Lisa Wexler, talk show host at WSTC/1380WNNLK and author of Secrets of a Jewish Grandmother, just asked me to tell the audience what I do. You know I was thrilled to talk about our
(Lisa W.) workshops and of course the new Writers’ Room. There were well over 100 women there and many of them were writers. The panelists talked about the harsh realities of the current publishing market — how hard it is to find an agent and then find a publisher. They all insisted that your work must be the best it can be — keep rewriting! And rewrite that book proposal until it is perfect. Carolina insisted to all that writing must be your passion and you must have purpose and expertise in your area. MJ Rose taught us about the various ways you can brand yourself and get people to notice you through social media. We will be inviting some of these ladies to speak at the new Writers’ Room. For now, thanks to all for inviting me.
by Tish & Patrick, April 19, 2010
By Patrick McCord
This article in The New York Times, 3/31/10, “Next Big Thing in English: Knowing They Know That You Know” is a messy but interesting introduction to cognitive literary studies. I say “messy” because the writer is struggling to integrate conceptual and political ideas, and then to cover an example of usefulness. Well and good. The big ideas are in place (and even an MRI of the brain reading), if the evolutionary “knowing” angle a bit tortured to make the main points. Nevertheless: FINALLY, the discipline of English Studies is getting about cognition.
I wrote my dissertation on cognitive narratology ten years ago, and nobody was very interested, not at my “flagship” university (the University of Georgia) nor on the job market (I had one offer; which I grabbed). I’m glad to see that the Big Important English Departments are catching up, but glad I have a ten year headstart.
Frankly, I’m puzzled that they took so long to come around. It’s almost commonsensical that reading and writing could be better studied and taught if we spent less time with dead authors’ “intentions” (at which we can only guess) and more time with the neurological-psychology of how we read and write. Reading and writing are increasingly important skills for everyone—not just authors and book critics—and we in education need to understand how to optimize brain function during both.
Missing from this article—and I fear from English Studies as well— is the all important problem of how writers can be better taught via cognitive science. That’s what Write Yourself Free(SM) is all about.
Speaking of writers, however, there’s another interesting article in Monday, April 19th Times “Mr. Cinderella, From Rejection to Pulitzer” about Paul Harding whose book Tinkers recently won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Tinkers, however, was had been rejected by all the big names in NY publishing, agents, editors, and presses. These literary mavens and cognescenti advised him to write something more commercial and action pacted. Mr Harding wasn’t buying it. He wanted to write what he wanted to write, so after 3 years in a drawer, Tinkers finally got picked up by tiny Bellevue Literary Press. From there, the book’s beautiful sentences and very personal vision made it the darling of small indie bookstores and literary blogs. Among the passionate readers, the book had buzz. Still, the Times and several other national papers didn’t bother to review it, yet it made the cut at NPR and few other ten best lists, and from the gathering buzz, it got the attention of the Pulitzers. Mr Harper also inked a two book contract with Random. And a Guggenheim.
Not bad. The lesson as I see it is: work on your craft and write in the way that gives you the most pleasure.
by Tish & Patrick, April 2, 2010
The Editing Company Presents: so that interesting work can find interested audiences. Oh YEAH! (Website up NEXT WEEK) www.editingcompanypresents.com
The Editing Company Presents is an online publication featuring a variety of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and other print worthy notions and is available free (free!) for on-site reading or as a download.
EdCoPresents is selective: All the works are copyrighted creations of writers from Write Yourself Free workshops and classes. EdCoPresents is, in part, a showcase for talent and in part, an ongoing experiment that extends the Write Yourself Free process. WYF writers have written some very good stuff with this method. Ergo: The Editing Company Presents.
And, for longer works: we will publish them as they are being written and revised, so readers can watch the writers’ minds at work.
In both venues, we invite readers to partake and comment (positively and constructively).
The Editing Company Presents is the first active and ongoing publishing effort of The Editing Company imprint. Doesn’t this sound cool? Watch for it!
by Tish & Patrick, April 2, 2010
It’s catching on! We had thirty people attend a storytelling event at the Port Coffeehouse in Blackrock in March. And the theme was FEAR. And boy were we scared. Tellers disclosed some pretty hard to hear stuff. But the everyone really felt like they got something special out of the evening: COMMUNITY. Like being around that old campfire but better (we could drink). Next up – April 24 and the theme is red hot SEX. Details about the theme to follow. contact us to participate.
by Tish & Patrick, January 25, 2010
Saturday night we had a great bunch of people show up for our FIRST Storytelling event at the Port Coffeehouse in Blackrock. What a blast! The fun is the in the variety of the stories that turn up. Saturday night the theme was identity and the stories ranged from finding love on Craig’s List to the irrational fear of vegetables and slime. Then there was a good catholic girl who did a bad thing in a methodist church. How do you learn that you’re stubborn? When you spend an entire night trying to push the garage you’ve driven off its foundation back on using only brute strength.
Listening to these surprising stories is not simply so much better than television and most formula movies, it stimulates our social synapses in ways we just don’t get enough of. Next one: around Feb 20th.
by Tish & Patrick, January 17, 2010
How fun is that — get a lot writers and friends in a beautiful room and party! And how wonderful to have writers listening to writers. There was a lot of talent at the first Write Yourself Free party (Jan. 15th). We will have to do it again. Thank you everyone for coming. We really appreciate your support.
Here’s an article on Patrick teaching our workshop at the Wilton Library. If you are curious about the workshop, this article goes into detail. (Westport Patch)
