More Focusing Strategies from the Pros

Last week, I posted a list of strange things writers do to get themselves writing. Well, this morning, I ran across a few more for the list (subscription required for full story, scroll down to "Why I Write"):

"Emile Zola pulled the shades and composed by artificial light. Francis Bacon, we are told, knelt each day before creating his greatest works. Martin Luther could not write unless his dog was lying at his feet, while Ben Jonson needed to hear his cat purring. Marcel Proust sealed out the world by lining the walls of his study with cork. Gertrude Stein and Raymond Carver wrote in their cars, while Edmond Rostand preferred to write in his bathtub. Emily Dickinson hardly ever left her home and garden. Wallace Stevens composed poetry while walking to and from work each day at a Hartford insurance company. Alexander Pope and Jean Racine could not write without first declaiming at the top of their voices. Jack Kerouac began each night of writing by kneeling in prayer and composing by candlelight."

Tips for Successful Book Reviewing

When I launched Critical Mass, one of my fellow bloggers asked what topics or questions people wanted see us address on the site. In response to people's responses -- and the steady stream of emails the NBCC gets asking for tips on becoming a professional book critic -- Elaine Vitone and I just put together and posted a document called, "Tips for Successful Book Reviewing: Strategies for Breaking in and Staying in." It covers a range of topics: getting started as a critic, building a reviewing portfolio, going national, keeping editors happy, ethics, and more.

I posted it on Critical Mass but thought I'd post it here as well, since many readers of this blog are writers who might be interested in this sort of thing. The document is a work-in-progress: I'd love to hear thoughts, including other people's tips, and and additional questions/issues we haven't addressed but should. So please, post them here in the comments section, or on the Critical Mass post about it.

And stay tuned for more similar projects: We're now doing a series of Q&As with professional critics and review editors, where we'll tackle questions like, how does a critic pick which book to review, what's with the shrinking review sections, and more. In the meantime, check out this first installment, let us know what you think, and have a great long weekend!

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Tips on Freelancing and Getting Published

People often contact me asking for advice on getting published, breaking in as a freelancer, coming up with story ideas, you name it. I've often told myself I'd come up with a FAQ page, or maybe even write a short book on the topic, but I've never had time. So I'm very pleased to say that Elaine Vitone, an MFA student in the University of Pittsburgh's nonfiction writing program (where I went to grad school, and where I was a visiting teacher last semester) has taken several handouts I wrote, combined them with a lengthy phone interview she did with me, and turned them into a great sort of Conversation With Rebecca Skloot. The document will be available soon as part of a guidebook for writing students in Pitt's graduate program. I'm posting it here with hopes that it will provide useful information for those who contact me seeking tips. Many thanks to Elaine for putting it together.

On Writing: Baltimore Review Interview

I often get emails from writers asking for tips on breaking into magazine writing or making the leap to becoming a full time freelancer. I keep promising myself I'm going to put together a Frequently Asked Questions page as a resource (I actually plan to write a book about this stuff at some point), but my writing schedule has been particularly hectic lately. So, for now, I thought I'd post a link to a recent Baltimore Review interview, where writer Heather Harris asks me about writing, getting published, and more. The answers are very condensed, but some of them touch on points folks may find useful.

It starts with this hilarious (and undeniably true) first line: "Talking with Rebecca Skloot is like sticking your head out the window of a car moving at 70 miles per hour." What can I say ... I've been accused of being a fast-talking whirlwind since I was three. And riding with your head out the window is fun (see above). So I thank her for that, and for making me younger in print than I am in life -- can't complain about that.

On Writing: New New Journalism

For those who don't know, I'm in the throes of an enormous deadline for my book, which means I've been spending a lot of time pacing, dusting, writing, editing, alphabetizing my bookshelves, reading, writing, and pacing some more. In the process I've become painfully aware, once again, of the very bizarre habits I've developed over the years to trick myself into sitting down at my computer to write: Unplug the modem from the wall, step away from the desk, turn on the laptop with nothing on it but my book, type one sentence, jump up, pace around the room, walk the dog, come back, sit back down, type another sentence, maybe two or three, jump up and pace again. Repeat until writing several hundred words between paces. And that's not even the bizarre part of my ritual.

So, the other day, I saw a brand new flashy colored paperback at Barnes and Noble called "The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft." I picked it up, saw it was full of interviews with people like Gay Talese, Ted Conover, Jane Kramer, Susan Orleans, Calvin Trillin, Lawrence Weschler ... This I had to have. So I got it, thinking, I'll use this baby when I teach, which I do from time to time, and I'll read around in it over the next few months. Yeah, right. The next night, I sat down and read through every interview in the book, word for word, in one sitting. I lingered on questions like, Is writing hard for you? What's your writing process? How do you start writing? Why do you make yourself a character in your stories? Do you ever worry about getting involved in the lives of your subjects? ...

I've spent a lot of time thinking about precisely these questions. And I tell you, I sucked this book down like it was my first dose of caffeine after a week-long withdrawal headache. Because (cliché as it may be) it reminded me of what I already know: That I'm not alone. That all writers go through this, and the answers we find to these questions help shape the books we write and make them our own. Writing is torture for most writers -- not constantly, but sometimes. In the end, we do all get our stories written. But the way we do this, well, it's just weird: Gay Talese writes his words on paper, tacks them to a wall, then crosses the room to look at them with binoculars to get a different perspective on his words. Jane Kramer has to cook for hours before she can write. Adrienne Nicole le Blanc sleeps for more than 10 hours, then gets up and start writing before she actually wakes up, so she doesn't have time to realize what she's doing, she just wakes up writing, then keeps going.

So what I'm saying is, this is a great book, and I recommend it to all readers of nonfiction, and all writers of it, regardless of whether you've won a Pulitzer or just published your first story in your neighborhood newsletter. We're all doing exactly the same thing.