At least there are still jobs for journalists...

Ever since I subscribed to Groupon a few months ago, I've been receiving short, witty blurbs in my Inbox everyday, each enthusiastically describing bargains and deals for restaurants, spas, and various types of instruction.

Little did I realize that the people writing those Groupon blurbs represent a new wave of journalism, and that Groupon itself is becoming one of the biggest employers of journalists (and creative writers) in the country. An article in the Dec. 20th The Atlantic ( Forget Journalism School and Enroll in Groupon Academy - Elizabeth Weingarten - Technology - The Atlantic ) states that "Forty percent of Groupon's writers have prior journalism experience, 70 percent were creative writers and 20 percent wrote marketing or business copy." Groupon's CEO even declares in the article that the "most well-read publication now might be Groupon."

Many of the Groupon "deal" blurbs are clever and cute, but a long and steady diet of what the article calls this "hybrid journalism-advertising prose" is getting a little cloying and wearisome for me. Each blurb is, essentially, a clever lede (journalism-speak for a catchy and/or mood-setting first paragraph of a story) that leads to a mere classified ad/description. Some recent examples:

Herbert Hoover won America's hearts and votes when he promised a college-educated chicken in every pot and a kayak in every garage. Get a taste of the American dream with today's Groupon...

Eating with your hands is a joy second only to playing a woodwind instrument with your feet. Dig in with all four hands with today's Groupon: for $15, you'll get $30 worth of Ethiopian food...

Defy the whitening forces of winter and transform yourself into a bronzed god, goddess, or Gilbert Gottfried with today’s Groupon...

Photographs provide a more concrete way of recording recollections than sketching portraits in sand or dictating memoirs to an empty jam jar. Preserve precious memories with today's Groupon...

Should I really complain? It may not be poetry or even good journalism,  but at least writers are getting work (and I am, occasionally, getting organic rotisserie chicken and other such succulent delights for 50 percent off...).

Suggested gifts for writers, or those who love good writing

Anyone who really knows me understands that I am not the biggest fan of the Christmas season. I dislike the annual frenzied, consumer-driven ritual it has become, and the constant, media-inflicted we-must-save-the-American-economy guilt.

However, if you love Christmas and/or feel the need to buy gifts, you might as well support good writing, and publications that deserve to continue. [Note: These are not paid promotions...]  Here are a few of the things I am giving to others and to myself:

I Just Lately Started Buying Wings is by Writing Home friend, Kim Dana Kupperman.
    "In this collection of essays, Kupperman looks at major life events—divorce, death, falling in love—with a candor and wisdom that gently places the reader into scenes from her life. We experience her mother's crazed neglect, her father's distance, a new lover's exquisite beauty. ...Kupperman proves that she has found her own wings, and is soaring." [from my Amazon.com review]
     For more on this book, see the NYT book review and NYT Paper Cuts interview with Kim.

A wonderful surprise arrives in my mailbox every three weeks in the form of one story magazine, which provides just what it says—one short story—in a pocketbook-sized issue. While other short story markets continue to dry up, OS keeps plugging away, publishing more than 140 short stories since 2002. I have to admit that it's the size that prompted me to subscribe to it—it's just a little bigger than the early issues of my own (defunct) a very small magazine. But it's the stories that keep me reading and wanting more.

Amazingly, The Sun magazine has been continuously publishing intelligent writing since the mid-1970s and, in recent years, without the support of advertisements. What began for publisher Sy Syfransky as a venture put together in a friend's garage and hawked from his backpack on the streets of Chapel Hill, N.C., is now a respected prize-generating enterprise; stories and essays from The Sun are regularly picked for Pushcart, Best American..., and other publishing awards.
      The long interview, at the front of the magazine, is almost always provocative and interesting; "Readers Write," at the back of the magazine, offers lyrical glimpses into readers' lives; and the fiction and essays in the center of the magazine showcase some of the best writing around. My only criticism of The Sun is that is can veer toward the dark and depressing a little too often. But not to read it is to miss out on things that feel important and necessary.
    The Sun is currently struggling, it seems, to stay afloat, requesting contributions and suggesting that subscribers give friends gift subscriptions. So, if you subscribe to The Sun (as a present to yourself), consider also giving gift subscriptions to people you know who cherish good writing.

Stephen Colbert's advice on saving the publishing industry

In case you didn't see it a few days ago, The Colbert Report vividly described the last, desperate option available to the magazine industry.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Cosmo Is Available in Mongolia
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> March to Keep Fear Alive

Yes I did!

Grab the time and do it—that's what I learned from NaNoWriMo 2010. Because of that contest, I wrote a 50,011 word novel in 30 days, a book that otherwise would never have been written.

I'm not sure that anyone can write a deeply nuanced and eloquent novel in a month—mine certainly isn't. But I didn't expect it to be. And that lack of expectation really gave me a wonderful freedom to write.

The other great thing about NaNoWriMo is that I could actually talk about it with people. I charted my progress on my profile page there (see chart from it, above), and put occasional updates on my Facebook page. It made my fiction writing visible, for once; I felt a part of a (temporary) community. And it made me write, no excuses. Dirty dishes, unmade bed, work deadlines—so what? I had 1,665 words to write each day and until they were done, I put other things aside. But, as you can see from the chart, I struggled to always find the time to write. Sometimes regular life was unavoidable.

In my novel, I wrote from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, something I probably never would have otherwise attempted. It was the first thing that popped into my head on November 1st and I had to see it through, no time for redos or rewrites or more than minimal editing. I couldn't lose time to rethinking the plot or the characters. They were mine for 30 days.

Writing for the YA audience also required a more resolved and happier ending than the usual melancholy ending I fall into when writing for adults. I found the happy ending wasn't that difficult when it was inherent or organic to the story, so I hope I can write happier endings in the future even when I'm not writing for children.

An impromptu strategy session in the children's library

How cool is this—I visited a local public library this morning and mentioned my YA novel-in-process to the children's librarian. She got so interested in the project that she pulled another children's specialist from the back room and we sat around talking about it for a good 15-20 minutes.

I am at the point in my book where my heroine is going to seriously start "booking"—a verb I've made up for visiting scenes in books via a magic bookmark—through four books, and I hadn't finalized my list of books as of this morning. As I told the librarians, if I had a year to research this, I could take the time to read all the books (again) that I want her to visit.

She is booking through books that Ellen, another, older girl is supposedly lost in. My heroine, Sarah, and Mrs. Reid, the librarian who gave her the magic bookmark (and Ellen's mom), are trying to find a commonality among the four books. That's where I was stuck. I didn't want them just to be books that I knew about, but time is of the essence since I am writing the book for NaNoWriMo, and only have seven days left to finish it.

We finally determined that my original choices weren't so bad; the obvious commonality they share is water (though I also know that's not the reason that Ellen chose them).

I also asked if either of them knew of a book with the same kind of themes, characters, plot, etc., as mine. I have been worried about this since I have been so writing quickly and wondered if some of my ideas might be coming from something I'd already read. Fortunately, they hadn't.

How wonderful to have a fictional work taken so seriously—and what serious fun.

NaNoWriMo Day 21

Today, on my 21st day into National Novel Writing Month, I am 28,499 words in—which might sound impressive until I hit the Stats bar on my NaNoWriMo Profile Page: I am 6,501 words behind. My suggested cumulative word count for the beginning of the day was 35,000 words.

It's not from lack of interest or idea on my part; life has gotten in the way. My kid's two full days and two half-days off from school this month, hubby out of town for consecutive weeks, and a half-day visit to the ER with E-girl for a broken arm, has meant that I haven't been able to sit alone and write at the computer for the two or three hours I need every day. Desperate, I have taken to writing paragraphs as multiple text messages on my cell phone or scribbling into a tiny notebook whenever I am sitting waiting anywhere or watching kids at play.

I have guiltily set E-girl in front of the TV on the schools days off, but I just can't put her there for more than an hour and a half. She needs fresh air and friends and interaction.

So I really want to write this book—all this time away from it has made me desperate to put it down, which is a wonderful thing, if you think about it. Without the pressure to finish it within a certain time frame, it might still just be another one of my good ideas I've never made time for. The less I am able to write it, the more urgent it has become for me.

"Oh hi!" and other awkward ways to get your characters into a room

A chance encounter with the cult classic, "The Room," reminded me how hard it is to get fiction characters smoothly transitioned into a scene.

"The Room" is celebrated in various compilations and snippets all over YouTube for its poor acting, editing, and writing. In the 30-second edit above, someone has taken some of the most awkward entrance dialog from the movie. [This will probably be taken down from YouTube soon, so if it's blank, that's why.] I'm not sure that I'm not guilty of some of this in my current project, a hastily written novel for NaNoWriMo.

Another scene from "The Room" that is also available on YouTube (inserted below) should be Exhibit A for writers wanting to know which scenes to cut from their fiction. The scene—which zips by in 19 seconds!—lacks meaningful dialog and description, doesn't seem to move the story along, and doesn't give each character a distinctive voice.

How can we read good prose when we're reading so much junk?

As my daughter and I stood in line at the grocery store yesterday, facing a display of magazines including Us, People, and The National Enquirer, she asked: "Why are people interested in reading about all these celebrities and made-up stuff?"

"Well," I said, unloading food from my cart onto the conveyer belt, "I think people like to read about celebrities for a couple of reasons. Making fun of how the celebrities look or what the celebrities wear makes people feel better about themselves."

"That's not very nice," E-girl said. "And it's dumb."

"Yeah, it's dumb," I replied, "but what's dumber is when people read about celebrities and think they really know something. That's what they know and share with people."

"I don't want to read about it," she said simply. I would have given her a big hug and kiss at that moment if the cashier wasn't ready and the grocery cart wasn't between us.

Would it be hypocritical at this point to confess that I read People magazine whenever I'm sitting in a doctor's waiting room? Reading it occasionally is like a trivia challenge, trying to guess why people are it in. I can recognize rock stars and most actors. But Snooki and all these "real" housewives? I don't know why they are important enough to merit my time, or a magazine cover. What have they done besides appear on TV?

Women's magazines used to publish short stories, but now they fill those pages with celebrity profiles. Sigh.

I looked at the rack of magazines and wondered at how much effort had gone into producing them—the writers, photographers, editors—and how, as far as I was concerned, it was all for naught, for no real value. Was there one paragraph with valuable information, one sentence of beautiful prose, in the entire rack of them?

Where are the writers who once might have written the short stories and essays for national publications? The lucky ones have retreated to literary magazines, the luckiest to The New Yorker and a few other journals that actually pay. The rest of us, to blogs.

Things I've learned from NaNoWriMo, five days in

As promised in a previous post, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month. Here are some things I realized in the last few days because of it:

• Writing under a timeline/deadline pushes words out of me. I am writing words I would never have put down on paper, in a genre (young adult fiction) I had never much contemplated before.

• When you're writing this fast there is no time for poetic description or nuance. The storyline is the thing, the pursuit of reaching the next page.

• Writing for a purpose, for a pursuit with a recognizable name, has brought my writing more out in the open. I am a participant in NaNovWriMo—I said so here and on my Facebook page. I rarely mention my writing in process.

• Since I must write at least 1,664 words a day, I can sit at my desk guilt-free, not worrying about the dishes in the sink, the pile of laundry in the corner. Otherwise, given my limited free time, it just won't get written.

• In an effort to reach my 50,000 word count, I'm already contemplating the longest possible way to describe and name things.

• I prefer writing short stories. I'm 19 (single-space) pages in already—a short story, done. And 25 luxurious days to edit it.

What should I write about when there is so much to say?

As I said in my last post, I signed up for NaNoWriMo a few days ago, with the goal of sitting down on November 1st and writing a novel from scratch. It all sounded very spontaneous and exciting—I was going to start writing whatever popped in my head and see if I could carry on with it for 49,300 more words.

But then, after I signed up, I checked their web site more attentively. They suggest I have an outline in hand.

Outlines and plot notes are very much encouraged, and can be started months ahead of the actual novel-writing adventure. Previously written prose, though, is punishable by death.

Gulp. I am writing this post on Thursday, setting it to publish on Sunday, because I imagine I'm going to be spending Sunday night scratching out potential plotlines.

J.K. Rowling said that Harry Potter came to her in a vision and she knew she had to write it down. I don't think such inspiration works well under pressure, or within a three-day deadline. I've been touching my forehead with my fingertips the last couple of days, trying to coax out ideas, but it is starting to feel like a clean slate in there.

It's overwhelming to realize that I could write about anything. So right now I am in panic mode, trying to think of new ways of doing something that is already tried and true (giving me a new empathy for film producers!).  Here's what I've come up with so far:


• As people are gathered in a fallout shelter in London, they each tell a tale from their lives to get through the night. 12 tales, based on Grimm's Fairy Tales, sort of a Canterbury Tales in the 20th Century. [After I imagined this, I realized it was inspired by the film "Atonement" and recently listening to a lecture in my car called "Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind." Why 12? I figure I'd write each chapter would be 15 pages, giving me the necessary total.]

• A female Holden Caulfield makes her way through a suburban Maryland high school year. But what does her voice sound like (too easy to fall into Valley Girl speak—not sure there is a recognizable Maryland teenager sound...)? What is her quest?

• 10 stories about Santa Cruz, each story a different character's story. Last story, they all come together.


The older I get, the more I realize how hard it is to be fresh and new and not derivative. There's an overwhelming amount of life experience to try to compact into 200 pages. At the same time, there's that need to drive the story along with challenges for the main characters, while scattering mysteries or unanswered questions every few pages that will keep the reader turning the page—to manage that is the difference between writing fiction and typing. I think I will be doing a lot of the latter, as I make my way through the necessary word count.