The list of AWP panels this year is overwhelming, several hundred offerings over a three-day period. It’s kinda ridiculous, when you think about it. Are we really expected to spend hours of our precious time reading through these descriptions?

Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s not annoying.

Thankfully, I’m here to help.

I’ve discovered that you can learn a great deal about a panel simply by reading the first word of each line of its description. And not only that, dear readers, but I have combed through all three days of festivities–all three!–and below have laid out the top pick(s) for each and every time slot.

(You’re right, it is very generous of me. But I’m a helper. It’s in my nature. I’m a people person, people.)

(I’m also broke, so I just want to mention that if you wish to thank me for taking care of this monumental task for you, you’ll find me at the hotel bar, nursing an ice water but really wanting a whiskey and ice water.)

(Jameson.)

Make sure to show up early for these, because once word of this post spreads, the panels below are going to be in hellishly high demand.

THURSDAY

9:00 – 10:15

R109. Zentner’s Saga

Zentner,

often

before

published

did

journey

emerging

10:30... more »

I don’t know how the weather is where you are, ladies and gentlemen, but it’s hotter than a really hot thing where I’m sitting. Okay, that’s not entirely true. The supermarket café I am stealing an Internet connection from is pretty near freezing, but the outside world is all but made of sweat and humidity, and the two are not necessarily unrelated. Say it with me, ‘Ew.’

What is there to do on days when you barely have the strength to apologize to the person you’re peeling yourself off of in the subway as you stumble to the next air conditioner? Anyone who’s seen a very enlightening episode of Hey Arnold! will know that the usual solutions (the public pool, an afternoon movie, a fire hydrant, etc.) will only end in disappointment. In these dark times, we must turn to the great literary minds. When they are done with their own rounds of, ‘Ew. Gross. Don’t touch me. Ew,’ the only word they will find is, ‘Drink.’

And who are we to argue?

Chum it up with a real man’s man, and try the Papa Doble (aka Hemingway Daiquiri).

2 ounces silver rum (Cuban rum if you have it)

3/4 ounce fresh lime juice

1/2 ounce... more »

The NY Tyrant Guide to Not Being a Horrible Writer in the Year 2010 is Vice’s uncharitably snarky take on slush pile cliches, and it proves that I, too have tortured readers of slush piles the world over. Here are a few of my favorites from the list:

“When you think you are about to write something really good, go to the grocery.” This is true of my own fiction writing. If I think a sentence is great, that’s generally because it’s full of purple-prose or writerly diction that calls attention to itself and takes the reader out of the story. A  good rule of thumb is to cut it in the second draft.

“Oh sweet, you went to that museum alone one day and had a tuna sandwich in the cafe? You’re killing me, please.” I’ve written this story. Twice. And it even got submitted out. <dies of shame>.

“Write less dialogue, unless you are really good at it, which I guarantee you aren’t.” Yeah, I suck at dialogue. Now I mostly try not to write it. Reported dialogue and narrative summary are my friends.

“Please, God, no characters who are musicians. There is nothing worse than trying to describe music, or how someone... more »

Hello. My name is Joe Robb and I live on the south bank of Cincinnati.

I don’t know what you know about Cincinnati.

When I used to live in Boston, I met people from the East Coast or the West Coast who thought my hometown–the mighty metropolis on the coast of the Ohio–coasted through a flat sea of corn, and that it was a town, small and rural, full of twang. They were surprised by my accent, and to learn that my city was big, and ugly sometimes, but beautiful at other times, so seeped in odd history that when you step on the pavement of Cincinnati, stories leak up through the cracks in the asphalt and the smells of malted barley and pigflesh flood your nose.

Was that too much?

Cincinnati is the Queen City, The ‘Nati, The City of Seven Hills, The Beer Capitol of the World, and Porkopolis. Cincinnati is the birthplace of Roy Rogers, Bootsy Collins, Doris Day, Stephen Spielberg, Sarah Jessica Parker, and King Records, but not Jerry Springer, although he served on our city council from 1971 until 1974 when he resigned, admitting he had hired a prostitute with a personal check . . . that bounced. The... more »

Fringe blog followers may remember a post I wrote last month about the lack of non-corporate bookstores in my new Florida environs, an area I labeled Fahrenheit 101 (running the risk of having Ray Bradbury call me a “screwed asshole,” as he did Michael Moore when the corpulent latter released “Fahrenheit 9/11”). Readers suggested that I spend more time writing, open a bookstore of my own, or even pack up again and move to a more happening place. All good ideas—but I’m taking none of that advice and doing none of those things.

Instead, I’m co-founding a writing workshop in Fahrenheit 101.

Brainchild of Fringe friend and Duhr girlfriend Justine Tal Goldberg, the [Working Title] Writer’s Workshop is … well, so far it’s just a helluva lot of work. We find ourselves talking to financial advisors about Florida tax laws, talking to Chambers of Commerce about occupational licenses and zoning, local rags about ad rates, local bookstores (yes, we expanded our search area and found one or two in the county. Two, to be precise) about cross-promotion. It’s all very adult. We hold weekly meetings on our back porch where we discuss syllabi, reading lists and seminars, and we’re even thinking of joining a local Young... more »

I’m a fan of Slate V’s Open Book: Writer’s on Writing—a collaboration between Slate and the NYU Creative Writing Program. Check out their most recent video interview of Jorie Graham in “Balancing Parenthood and Poetry.” I love the image of Graham rubbing her pregnant belly on Emily Dickinson’s grave!

What to do with all those rejection slips? I know—bathroom wallpaper, bird nest offering, papier-mâché craftastic something-or-other, ugh. Or, you could send ANY 10 of those hoarded rejections (I know you’re saving them for some sadistic reason because I am too) to Marginalia with $1 and receive an (almost free!) issue of Marginalia Magazine for your perusal. It’s like positive publishing karma. Thanks to Brevity for the tip.

For your Sad Bastard discount send (10) rejections and $1 to:
Sad Bastard
Marginalia
P.O. Box 258
Pitkin, CO 81241

Ah, the rollercoaster world of The Writer; perilous, torturous, and (hopefully) gifted with the occasional smattering of giddy, sentence-spinning glee.

Being a hideously lazy waste of space, I’m not, nor ever will be, a ‘writer’. At best, I’m ’someone who sometimes writes things that I don’t have to’. Every now and then I’ll wonder how I managed to spend all of Saturday’s glorious daylight hours in front of my computer, churning out what only amounts to a couple of pages worth of shite, but most of the time I’m engaged in far less noble endeavours, like, I dunno, reading the paper, or the back of a cereal packet (good god, that’s a lotta sugar).

Today I stumbled across yet another fascinating Guardian piece (they should probably start paying me for all this unsolicited promo): ‘Writing for a living: a joy or a chore?’ and thought it might be nice to share it with you all, just in case anyone else out there might feel vaguely heartened that it’s okay not be overwhelmed with frantic ecstasy with every word they type.

Here’s someone else saying what I was trying to say, only with a lot more eloquence and authority:

“I get great pleasure from writing, but... more »

Since you Fringers seem to quite like your writing and your writers, I’d thought I’d share a piece of my Gurdian-centred perusing with you all:

‘The trusted friends who steer novelists away from cliche‘

Having read Eliot Weinberger’s 1983 essay, “The Bomb,” in his classic Works on Paper, published on New Directions, I started immediately looking online for more. There is an article in Bomb Magazine, a conversation between Weinberger and poet Forrest Gander on why “they are confounded by the astounding absence of the role of poet as a public cautionary figure.”

The essay “The Bomb” is a must, especially with these next few days seemingly everywhere devoted–from Facebook, to blogs, to poets’ invitational emails–to the AWP Conference in Chicago. As early as 1983 Weinberger is pointing out the poet’s “recently acquired status as a wage-earner” and its necessary complications involving literature in the affairs of the state (i.e., university chairs, federal grants, and the like).

Amiri Baraka, who took part in the (now-largely forgotten, I think) May 26, 1982 “Poets Against the End of the World” reading at NYC’s Town Hall, thought that the long shadow of The Bomb would lead to “dynamic, socially relevant poetry” which, to Weinberger at that time, remained to be seen. Naturally, this hasn’t come to pass, at least in the large-scale poetry “movements” of contemporary America, aside from small pockets here and there.

Political thought in poetry, aside perhaps... more »

When a friend told me that John Updike had passed away, I surprised him with the gravity of my response. “It’s been a tough year for the literary world,” I said, sighing.

I was thinking, of course, of another profound loss last September.

While most industries are nothing but gloom and doom these days, the literary field has taken quite a few beatings as of late. There’s the demise of the publishing industry; the technological take-over of books; the ongoing crisis of the short attention span; the destruction of quality literature; the downsizing of newspapers and columns; the influx of dirty, lying memoirists; and the harmful deluge of more creative writing MFA programs. Hell, even Toni Morrison’s latest book was met with little to no excitement and so-so reviews.

By all accounts, it’s a terrible time to be a writer. The great ones are dying off in record number, and the new ones can’t compete with snappy blogs, clever tweets, and celebrity tell-alls.

The way I see it, in times such as these, writers have three options: (1) Drink yourself into oblivion to numb the pain caused by the demolition of your dreams, (2) Throw in the towel and finagle your way into an industry that isn’t dying, like, say, fundraising, or... more »

As many of you have heard, prolific American author John Updike died today. In this series, we ask Fringe contributors to remember a literary legend. Sarah Zucker is the second to weigh in:

John Updike is usually most well-remembered for his novels, which I have admittedly not read. His poetry, however, was crucial to my understanding of the inner-connectivity in the world around us. The Banal and the Sacred co-habitate within his poems seamlessly, and he speaks with a voice so familiar, so modern, that it shakes your core to recognize the deep truths within.

As I said before, I am deep in the trenches of writing a novel in 30 days or less, or the whole book is free. So this post comes to you from the sort-of distant past. I write this one day before the election, so I am still beautifully in the dark. I can still worry about silly things.

Like grammar.

My nerd and language hero, Stephen Fry, has just written a new blog post about the nature of language which is a must-read for any writer. Especially writers who (whom? no, no, I think it’s okay) are freaking out about vomiting up a minimum word count every day, regardless of whether it’s grammatically correct or even makes any sense.

It’s a beautiful argument against Language Nazism, and a lovely mantra to keep in mind as you attempt to break through your block to get words down on the processor. Here’s a snippet:

Sadly, desperately sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other people’s usage and in which they show off their own... more »

Alright, some last words on why you write on computers or on paper.

On the whole, I prefer writing on paper. I have to put something down everyday. I keep a journal so that even if I’m not working on something, I have an outlet. For me it’s not just the paper that’s addictive because I also have a slight addiction to fancy, colorful pens.—Kandi H.

[After considering that others might not understand her process]…that is writing, I guess. The experience is different for everyone..– Aimee L.

…I type things that enter my mind with great speed, leaving no time to process what I’m writing as I write it and to, thus, create more to continue on….I write briefly and stop for several minutes, watching the blinking text cursor rhythmically taunt and jeer me as I try to think of what comes next. When I write by hand, the process is slower and capable of marinating in its own juices. I recommend both paths–handwriting and typing, especially since the latter has spell-check–for the reasons previously stated.—Lynz M.

I think computers have made it easy for a lot of bad writing to get out there – bigoted blogs, formulaic novels, inaccurate reporting – all rife... more »

Bonus post between weeks!
(See, I told you I’d make it up to you!)

Last time I talked to proponents of writing on paper. Here’s what the other side had to say:

I tend to use the computer mostly in the editing/refining stage. For me there’s also a distinction to be made here between creative writing and academic writing….I like using the computer for academic writing because it allows me to start with an outline and then flesh things out little by little. —Kandi H.

When I wrote everything on paper first, I was always carrying a notebook around with me, often a large one. Now I…don’t worry about always being prepared to write the next part of the story. Also, you don’t really have to worry about losing the page that you just wrote your most brilliant scene ever on. And there’s always spell check and the backspace key. I got really tired of not being able to easily change large sections on paper. –Aimee L.

I love the feeling of my laptop’s keys beneath my fingers. It propels me to type something–anything–with no aim or purpose (most of the time). I start typing, and I watch as something unfolds: a long... more »

First, I apologize for a belated post! I promise I’ll make it up to you!

Instead of writing this post from inside my own little bubble, I asked some friends what they thought of writing on paper.

I find that it’s much more satisfying for me to put the ink on the page myself rather than relying on a computer. I think that writing on paper makes the writing more personal. —Kandi H.

I hand wrote on paper for many years. I still do sometimes. There’s something about it that’s easier, like a connection from my hand to the pencil. I was also very against using pen….[Writing on paper] really just help[s] me get my ideas out. Staring at a blank sheet of paper just makes me want to write something in a way that a computer screen won’t.–Aimee L.

I always begin writing on paper; my initial draft is always written the same way I would talk to someone. Once the ideas are laid out on paper, then I can circle, draw, scale, move, exchange the phrases and words into a more comprehensible idea rather than just blurbs on paper. I usually re-write at least 3-4 times; it’s also helpful to track my... more »

Check it. One of the greats of our generation talks about his life and his process. And Sam — I’m totally into the reading binge. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close really delivered the goods. Cool that Slate is taking on the task of talking with living writers. I’ll be interested to see who they talk to next.

My favorite comedian, the late Mitch Hedberg, once cracked: “Every book is a children’s book as long as the kid can read!”

Clearly, this statement is little more than an uninformed generalization with the singular goal of eliciting a chuckle. But, I must admit, as a card-carrying member of the “Make ‘em laugh any way you can” brigade, the silly one-liner actually gave me pause. Because, more and more, Young Adult Literature that I see as a middle school teacher is taking on content and themes that, often, is more “adult” than “young.” The ensuing internal debate has become a sort of “Chicken or The Egg” conundrum that I’ve yet to resolve.

Then, upon being invited to write for Fringe, I was referred to another column in a popular blog on YAL. And, I totally dug the snarky, “I love the 80’s”-style reviews of books from our collective childhood, having consequently been inspired to unearth lots of dusty paperbacks in my basement. And, while it’s most certainly been quite a trip to revisit these characters and stories through grown up eyes, as I read, something strikes me. Though I feel very close to these books out of nostalgia, I can’t remember ever... more »

It’s another rainy weekend in Boston, but the gray sky and pervasive damp are only part of the reason for the grim pall–late last night, news broke of David Foster Wallace’s untimely death at the age of 46. DFW is best-known as a writer of satire, absurdism, and the eccentricities of contemporary American life. He made a splash in the literary scene from his very first post-modernist novel, “The Broom of the System” (1987) and continued to build up steam, and a cult following, with story collections, journalistic articles, and books of essays, before publishing what is largely considered his masterpiece, the novel “Infinite Jest” in 1996.

As I can’t speak to the influence or genius of these novels, I will defer to those who know. What I can say is that Wallace was the kind of writer who challenged the restraints of popular literature and consistently produced the kind of writing that made people question what they thought they knew; the kind of writer who took a Gourmet magazine assignment to cover the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival and turned it into a sprawling rumination on not only the lobster’s place in the “pop food industry” and American tourism, but also how the... more »