What’s the Value of NaNoWriMo?
The Grind
It’s a source of hair-pulling anxiety for artists of all kinds: how can you hold down a day job yet commit yourself to your art? It’s undoubtedly possible, but it’s daunting enough that apprentice writers often need advice on how to do it. Herewith, six artists (including writers Catherine Lacey and Shane Jones) explain how they pull it off. Related: Cathy Day on making a living as a writer.
Appearing Elsewhere
Millions writer Sonya Chung has a trenchant essay up at Huffington Post on the topic of writing and motherhood: “Art Before Life: Questioning the Parenthood Question.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Strayed, Iweala, Claudel, Andersen, Boyne, Hemingway, Dream Team, Pollack
Cheryl Strayed’s collection of “Dear Sugar” columns is out this week (read our review). Also out are Our Kind of People by Uzodinma Iweala, The Investigation by Philippe Claudel, True Believers by Kurt Andersen, and The Absolutist by John Boyne. The new edition of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms with all the extra endings is out, as is (just in time for the Olympics) an oral history of the original Dream Team. Donald Ray Pollack’s The Devil All the Time is out in paperback.
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So Many Pompadours
In the game of girlhood classics written during the nineteenth century, the correct answer to Little Women versus Anne of Green Gables is clearly Betsy-Tacy.
Sensitive Issues
You may have heard that Jess Row has a new book on shelves. The plot follows a man who undergoes a surgical procedure to change his race. In an interview at Guernica, the author talks to Grace Bello about writing and race, teaching in Hong Kong and what it means to grow up in Baltimore. You could also read the author’s Year in Reading entry.
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What a dumb response. She did not blame NaNoWriMo for the problem of too few readers & too many writers. No doubt if Kelogg wrote less & read more she’d have better comprehension skills. (Amateur diagnosis.) I couldn’t bother with the rest after that deliberate misinterpretation.
Basically, Miller thinks the whole venture is neither here nor there but all the fundraising & gala efforts would be better served to bolstering readership rather than the neverending supply of writers that abound. Is that an idea so hard to grasp even if one disagrees? Golly.