At Poets & Writers, Sarah Gerard, author of True Love, offers a suggestion for a small act of creation that can set your mind in order during moments of turmoil. “To reanimate my practice, get out of a turbid state, I reach into the deepest corner of my hard drive to extract the oldest piece of unpolished ore—the earliest unfinished essay or short story I can find,” Gerard says. “I look for something that represents my most elemental attempt at self-expression. This is especially rewarding in the middle of a long project, such as a novel, when it’s necessary for a short period to emerge from underground and clear my mind. I give myself the task of finishing something in a short period of time: a day, at most a week. It’s easier if I have a ready-made starting place, like a rough draft.”
Sarah Gerard on Revisiting Unfinished Work
Revisiting Olive with Elizabeth Strout
Barnes and Noble’s Black Friday Plan
Today is the much-discussed Black Friday, and Barnes and Noble has recruited prominent authors including Donna Tartt and David Mitchell to help raise holiday sales. The plan? To sell roughly 500,000 signed books.
After the last word
This weekend–at 2:30 am on Saturday, to be precise–Twitter bot @everyword was set to complete its 7-year run with the final word in the English language: “zymurgy.” Unexpectedly, the bot tweeted again half an hour later–with a nontraditional character it had surreptitiously glossed on the first run: éclair. Since @everyword, like Lazarus, probably won’t get the same fuss after its second death, check out The Guardian’s interview with creator Adam Parrish now.
Secondhand Fame
At Read by Famous, you can purchase secondhand books and know their previous owners—actors, comedians, athletes. There’s one week left in the auction, and all of the proceeds benefit charities. Pair with our own Jacob Lambert’s thoughts on thirty minutes at a used book sale.
Appearing Elsewhere
My review of Eowyn Ivey‘s debut novel, The Snow Child, is up at Slate.
Little Beasties
Recommended Viewing: Over at The New Yorker, Comma Queen Mary Norris tackles the big question we didn’t know we needed answered — what pronouns do you use for your pets?