“Conrad Aiken worked at a refectory table in the dining room; Robert Graves wrote in a room furnished only with objects made by hand. Ernest Hemingway wrote standing up; D. H. Lawrence under a tree. William Maxwell preferred ’small messy rooms that don’t look out on anything interesting.’ Katherine Anne Porter said she got her writing done in the country, where she lived like a hermit. Ben Franklin wrote in the bathtub, Jane Austen amid family life, Marcel Proust in the confines of his bed. Balzac ate an enormous meal at five in the evening, slept till midnight, then got up and wrote at a small desk in his room for sixteen hours straight, fueled by endless cups of coffee. Toni Morrison found refuge in a motel room when her children were small; E. B. White sought it in a cabin on the shore. Due to her problem back, Penelope Lively works in an armchair, with an “ancient electronic typewriter” on her lap, while A. L. Kennedy finds comfort in a ‘monster black chair’ in a room ‘the color of blood.’”

This excerpt is from an article by Alexandra Enders in Poets and Writers entitled “The Importance of Place: Where Writers Write and Why.”

Also, here’s a collection of photographs of science fiction and fantasy writers that I stumbled upon and where they write. And for anyone interested, below is a photo of the coffee shop I frequent where I write (and edit) a lot of my prose.

Do you think it’s important where a writer writes? As a writer, do you have a favorite place where you put pen to paper or fire up the lap top? Please let me hear from you.

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It’s always wonderful to get a good review. This one is by Nadine Laman. Please consider checking out her blog and her books.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009
BUZZ-BUZZ, BOOK BUZZ

Find signed copies here.

Thanks, Nadine, you definitely made my day.

This week’s post is pulled directly from The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. If you don’t already, you may want to subscribe. The Writer’s Almanac is full of interesting stories about writers and poets and includes a poem of the day. One of today’s gems proves that it’s never too late to start your writing career–even by accident.

Advertising exec-turned-writer, Ilene Beckerman, was born in Manhattan (1935). She didn’t begin her writing career until the age of 60, and even then, she became a published author almost by accident. She had written and illustrated a book for her five children, something to remember her by. She said: “My purpose was to say things to my children one doesn’t have the time to say. I wanted them to know I wasn’t always their mother. I was a girl, I had best friends, we did stupid things together. I was on a bus with my friend once eating dog bones so people would look at us. I wanted them to know.”

She took the book she’d written down to the ad agency she owned, to use the machines there to make a dozen photocopies. She put them in big red binders, with the illustrations she’d sketched in plastic sheet protectors, and handed them out to her children and a few close friends. She was done. Then, the cousin of a friend got a hold of one of the binders and sent it over to Algonquin Books. Pretty soon, the publisher was calling her about publishing her book. Beckerman said that they offered her “an advance that had a comma in it. I think I fainted.”

The book was Love, Loss, and What I Wore, published in 1995. It’s the story of her life growing up in Manhattan in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, and it’s accompanied by drawings of the clothes that she was wearing during that time. She insists that clothing plays an integral part in many women’s memories, that they can recall important events or distinct spans of their lives by what they were wearing at the time. When the book came out, bookstores were not sure whether to market it as memoir or fashion. It has now sold more than 100,000 copies.
 

Beckerman insists that clothes are the least important part of her book, which she considers a memoir. The book contains advice and aphorisms from her grandmother, who raised her, such as, “If you have to stand on your head to make somebody happy, all you can expect is a big headache.” And, “It’s better to be alone than with someone who makes you feel lonely.” And, “You never know what goes on behind closed doors, even Miss America can have hemorrhoids.” And, “If beauty brought happiness, Elizabeth Taylor wouldn’t have needed so many husbands.”

Since then, she has written and illustrated What We Do for Love (1997), Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness (2005) — containing unsent letters to Marilyn Monroe, Mother Teresa, Audrey Hepburn, Sarah Jessica Parker, and her own 11-year-old granddaughter — and Mother of the Bride (2000), about planning her daughter’s wedding. She said, “Childbirth was a lot easier than being the mother of the bride.”

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Music

by Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood
Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

“Music” by Anne Porter from Living Things: Collected Poems. © Steerforth Press, 2006.

 What kind of music moves you the most? Please comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

 
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Time for the drawing from my cowboy hat. I have all the names of people who entered via comments on an earlier blog post, as well as people sending me requests to enter through emails, Facebook, Inked-In and Twitter. Drum roll please…..(or perhaps that should be tumbleweed roll, since I’m in Colorado)….. The winner of the free autographed copy of Seeking Sara Summers is: (Yes, I am literally drawing names written on little strips of white paper out of my trusty cowboy hat.)

Pamela Detlor

Runners up: (in case the winner doesn’t claim her copy)

TruMischief and Tamela

Congratulations, Pamela. I will be emailing you shortly to get your address and send you your copy.

Thanks to all who entered. I plan to do this every couple of months so please consider entering again.

All the best,

Susan

An internet friend of mine (and kind reader of my book) just got back from a wonderful vacation during which she visited some incredible bookstores.  Anyone who loves writing, books and bookstores might appreciate these photographs. Let me know what you think and please leave Elena a comment at her hubpages. 

Here is a sample photograph that Elena emailed me to give you a quick taste. Enjoy!

Hey, all you creative types. I’m always looking for resources for writers and artists and a few months ago I came across a great little online community called Inked-in. Inked-in is an international social-networking community for writers, musicians and artists.

It’s a great group of people, with over 700 members so far. It is, of course, absolutely free, and it’s safe to say that you will get out of it what you put into it. It is for people who want to be writers, artists and musicians, as well as people already established in their fields.  Inked-In is associated with The Burry Man Writers Center, which you may also want to check out.

This is the mission statement on Inked-In’s home page:

Inked-In connects writers, artists and musicians with each other.

We are a giant, ongoing novel, with pathos and drama, pictures and video, stupid jokes and genuine friendships, and most of all supreme creativity. And you never know where it will head next.

Welcome home!

If you decide to join, check out my page , I’d love to be one of your first friends.

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How interesting can a person be who spends a lot of her working hours staring out a window? – S.E. Hinton

I thought you might enjoy this author interview from one of the blogs I subscribe to by Nathan Bransford. Ms. Hinton doesn’t grant interviews that often and this is a good one.

Interview With S.E. Hinton by Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent with Curtis Brown, LTD

Posted: 14 May 2009 08:00 AM PDT

I had the immense pleasure of meeting S.E. Hinton in Tulsa last month, and not only did I discover that she is a faithful lurker around these parts, she very graciously agreed to an interview. Her debut novel, THE OUTSIDERS, which she wrote when she was sixteen, revolutionized the children’s book world upon its publication with its realism and immediacy, a stylistic shift that is still reverberating to this day. She is the author of six other much-beloved novels, a picture book, and her new linked story collection, SOME OF TIM’S STORIES, was recently released in paperback, so please check that out.

You grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and still call it home to this day. What does it mean to you as a place, and what it is it about Tulsa that keeps you there?

Well, Tulsa is home, I was born here, still have family here, have friends I go back forty years with here. It’s a city that supports the arts, it’s easy to get around, it’s easy to work here. Tulsa gets the same Internet, same magazines, same cable as larger cities, we have a strong film community that brings us the best foreign and indie movies.

I like having a history with the place I live, seeing what is changing and what stays the same.

And the restaurants here are GREAT.

I would have to agree about Tulsan restaurants. “The Outsiders” is sometimes credited with creating and popularizing Young Adult fiction (YA) as a genre. Did you set out to write something new and different when you were writing? What was your mindset?

I guess in a way I did set out to write something new and different with The Outsiders, because I wanted to read something that dealt with teen life as I saw it. There wasn’t anything realistic for teenagers to read back then; I was through with the horse books, not ready for a lot of adult books, couldn’t stand the “Mary Sue Goes To the Prom” books, so one of the main reasons why I wrote it was to read it. Also, I loved to write, and had been writing since grade school, and I was angry about the social divisions in my very large high school (Will Rogers High).

Something I never knew about “The Outsiders” until we met is that even though you wrote it when you were only 16, it was actually your third novel. What did you learn about writing when you wrote those first two novels? What happened to them?

Like everyone else, I learned from my mistakes. I think every book is practice for the next one. At that time I still needed a lot of practice so I wisely never tried to publish them….

Read the rest of the interview here. S.E. Hinton talks about her books that have been made into movies; Marilyn Marlow, her children’s book agent for many years; her writing process; and advice to writers just starting out. Let me know what you think and if this was helpful to you.

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So the economy sucks. Maybe you’ve lost your job or you’re simply looking for something to do since you can’t afford to go anywhere right now. I have a suggestion. Maybe it’s time to write that book that you’ve talked about writing for the last ten or twenty years.

Nearly every time I give a book signing or reading for Seeking Sara Summers, someone inevitably walks up to me to announce that they want to write a book someday. Sometimes they’ll say they have the idea for the book, they just haven’t had the time to put it on paper. Sometimes they’ll even tell me their idea to see if I want to write it. (Please know that I will never take you up on this suggestion. I follow my own muse and like to develop my own ideas.)

But now, as the economy and our lives go through major restructuring, it may be the perfect time to get started. It requires absolutely no money up front. Most of us have a computer and know how to open a Word document. If we don’t, nearly all of our wonderful community libraries have computers and kind people there to show you how to work them. Or at the very least, most of us have paper and pens lying around the house, if not cocktail napkins and the backs of the envelopes of those bills you haven’t been able to pay.

Once you get started, you can tell your family and friends, as well as your online following, that you can’t go to the unemployment office right now because you’re working on your book. If anything, saying this may give you a much needed boost of self-esteem. After all, you aren’t sitting around watching Oprah, CNN or The View; you’re tapping into your artistic talent. This is an investment in your self that can pay great dividends down the road.

I’m not really suggesting that you shirk off your responsibilities. I’m just wondering if, for some of us, this time might offer an opportunity within the crisis.

However, nothing is easy. The journey from first word on the page to a finished manuscript that is good enough to be submitted to agents, editors and publishers is a multi-stepped process. Even if you decide to self-publish, you need a good, well-written product or your mother will be the only one to buy it.

Whether you write literary fiction, mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, women’s fiction, et al, or memoir or non-fiction, the process of writing that book can take months, even years, to complete. And even then, there are no guarantees. But you might as well get started while you have a little time and see where the path takes you. You may surprise yourself.

I believe that whatever you write, it will help you on your life’s journey. Writing is as much an act of self-discovery as anything else. It’s never a wasted activity, whatever the final outcome.

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The poem of the week is by Naomi Shihab Nye, an American poet. It was sent to me by a dear friend and I take great pleasure in passing it on to you.

May we all have a week where our happiness floats.

SO MUCH HAPPINESS

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,

a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,

something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.

It doesn’t need you to hold it down.

It doesn’t need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

and disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

and now live over a quarry of noise and dust

cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

It too could wake up filled with possibilities

of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

the soiled linens and scratched records…

Since there is no place large enough

to contain so much happiness,

you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

into everything you touch.  You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,

and in that way, be known.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Read an interview by Bill Moyers with Naomi Shihab Nye here.

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