My guest host Marrie Stone talks with New York Times bestselling author Tenth of December: Stories about his latest short story collection Tenth of December.

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(Broadcast date: March 13, 2013)

I just read a wonderful new writer’s second draft of her novel and one of my suggestions for strengthening her prose was to substitute weak adverb/verb combos for more compelling adverbs/verbs.  Unlike certain famous authors who disdain adjectives and modifiers, I believe they have their place, and if modifiers and adjectives are good, they hook the reader’s attention. So here are my go-to books on verbs and style that sit on my bookshelf and should sit on yours as well (plus a few more on creativity).

Better Than Great: A Plenitudinous Compendium of Wallopingly Fresh Superlatives is fun and enlightening, with an incredible array of fresh superlatives that get your brainwaves and creativity churning.

Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose is a book on style that I constantly recommend to my students. I’ve read it a couple of times, especially before I went into the revision of Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within.

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, 3rd Edition and Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing contain all those rules of usage you become confused about, like when to use lay/laid/lie/lain or who/whom, and so on.

And of course The Elements of Style Illustrated. I love this edition because it’s illustrated by one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Maira Kalman.

I don’t know which came first, my show or this book, but it’s the one book of essays about writing that I return to time and again. It contains two of my favorite writing essays, one by Walter Mosley and and one by Roxana Robinson. It is Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times.

Speaking of Walter Mosley, he’s known mostly as a crime or mystery novelist, but I love his little book on writing a novel called This Year You Write Your Novel.

You don’t have to be a dancer to appreciate The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. There’s so much here on creativity that applies to artists in all genres, and I especially like what she has to say about mirrors.

When I was teaching at UC-Irvine Extension, Writing from the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within was on my required reading list. The author, Dennis Palumbo, is a therapist as well as a writer, and former screenwriter, and he understands the inner workings of the creative mind, what hangs us up, how shame translates into procrastination or writers’ block, and more.

Making a Literary Life was also on my required reading list. I love Carolyn See’s voice and wisdom and humor about writing.

We have a bunch of great authors coming to town. This coming Tues., March 19, at Scape Gallery in Corona del Mar, Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Finding Casey: A Novel; Gayle Brandeis, author of Fruitflesh : Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write and The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel; and Seth Greenland, author of The Angry Buddhist will be joining us for An Evening with Novelists. They’ll talk about the art and craft of writing fiction as well as the business of writing, and their books will be on hand for purchase. You can read more by visiting the Speakers Series page or clicking here.

Next month, on April 23, we’ll host lit agent Betsy Amster where we’ll focus on how to nab an agent with a great query letter.

T. Jefferson Parker is in May, Chris Bohjalian in July, Ron Carlson in Sept., and Gregg Hurwitz is scheduled for Oct. More authors are planned but not yet firmed up, so check back here soon.

Have y’all seen this? What do you think?

Fellow ASJA member Susan Shapiro posted this in the New York Times. Memoir and essay writers, read on.

Kelly Caldwell has written for Newsday/New York Newsday, House Beautiful, Time Out New York, The Writer, Men’s Journal, The Huffington Post,  and others. One of her essays was named a Notable Essay by the editors of the Best American Essays series and anthologized in If These Walls Could Talk: Thoughts of Home. She teaches creative nonfiction classes and is also associate dean of the Gotham Writers’ Workshop.

I sent Kelly a few questions about writing via email and here’s what she said:

What drew you to nonfiction?

Partly, it was that I had such fun writing for my middle school and high school newspapers. When it became clear to my parents that I was going to make writing my vocation, they steered me toward journalism, thinking it would be stable and it would prevent me from going into creative writing and ending up in an unheated garret somewhere, dying young of tuberculosis.
But there’s more to it. True stories have their own unique power to reach people, to inspire them and move them. I think I sensed that even when I was writing about bake sales for my middle school paper. And that’s the part that motivates me even now.

 

You have experience in journalism as well as narrative nonfiction including essays.  What’s the difference for you?

            Well, there’s a lot of overlap. A lot of journalism, which is reported nonfiction writing, is also narrative nonfiction. Personally, I believe essays are nonfiction where reflection by the writer is central to the piece. It’s like the difference between Joan Didion’s On Morality and Where The Kissing Never Stops. On Morality has some research to it, but it is really an exploration of her thinking, whereas Kissing, Didion’s profile of Joan Baez, includes some reflection and is driven by her point of view, but they are not what, ultimately, the story’s about.

What changes in publishing have been most life altering or perspective altering for you (since you started freelancing)?

            In 1987, I submitted a story to an editor via the Internet for the first time. It felt somehow miraculous to me. It still does.

With print magazines paying less and buying less, do you think online-only publications are picking up the slack?

            Online publications certainly are creating an incredibly diverse literary marketplace – no matter your subject or your voice, there’s probably a place for you to share your work and be read. But financially, in terms of creating more ways for freelance writers to make a living, no, online publications have not picked up the slack, not yet.

I don’t have any specific stats at my fingertips, but I do know that a couple of years ago, Sara Horowitz of the Freelancers Union put out a paper that said nearly half of all freelance workers earn their living from two or more categories of work. She was talking about all freelancers, not just writers, but that squares with my experience. Even writers who routinely publish in paying markets are also working in other areas to make ends meet.

It may not be that way forever, though. As radically as the media industry has shifted in the last 15 years, it could shift again. And who knows what that will mean for writers?

I used to love the House Beautiful essay column and I see you’ve got a piece in the anthology edited by Elaine Greene. Those essays were so moving. What moves you to write an essay and do you need to know the theme when you begin?

            I almost never know the theme of an essay when I begin. I start with an idea, and I excavate the meaning as I go. Roger Rosenblatt says the essay is the story of an idea, and I wholeheartedly agree with that.

What I tell my students is you need just one thing to start an essay: An idea you feel moved to write about. That’s where I start.

By the way, I’m so glad you enjoy those House Beautiful essays as much as I do, Barbara! Elaine Greene is a terrific editor, and I feel lucky to have worked with her.

You teach creative nonfiction at Gotham, where you are also associate dean (and where I also teach).  What’s the difference between creative nonfiction and essays?

Essays are a form of creative nonfiction, which is a category that embraces a vast ocean of writing:  Explanatory journalism, biographies, lyric essays, opinion pieces, open letters like Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail or Naomi Shahib Nye’s To Would-Be Terrorists – they’re all creative nonfiction. To borrow from Lee Gutkind, it’s creative nonfiction if it’s a true story, well told.

Is there any advice you’ve received along the way that you will always remember, that you’d also like to pass on?

Yes, it’s advice my teacher Roger Rosenblatt gives to his students, and which I now give to mine: Go to hell.

By that he meant, don’t be afraid to look at the chaos within yourself. Face it, plumb it, use it.