Links

Yes, it’s summer. Summer: roses in bloom, farm-fresh strawberries and yellow donut peaches, warm evenings, leafy trees, swimming pools, ice cream, watermelons, sleeping in, sleeping late…

• Janet Fitch’s very wise 10 Writing Tips
• HEY! HOW’S THAT NOVEL COMING ALONG? YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED? (Really: my dry cleaner is STILL asking me, 4 years after I told her I was writing a novel. I regret having told her. I should have just said I work in HR–that tends to shut people right up): The quiet hell of 10 years of novel writing
• Dear Sugar’s remarkable column. “How you get unstuck.”
• Acting with James Franco (watch all of them!)
• You know about my love affair with VONA. Sharline Chiang is guest contributor at The Basin Blog, and is generously sharing her notes from various workshops, beginning with Gail Tsukiyama and David Mura
• Mel Gibson’s f*cking rants, visualized (yet another great use case for Wordle–the best use case being that you should plug your writing in and see which words you use most for editing purposes)
• This iPhone/ EVO youtube video has me cracking up…even weeks later
• Jeffrey Eugenides discusses his novel-in-progress. (Original interview w Galassi on his novel-in-progress here).

Links

Links!

If last month’s links were heavy on rejection, this month’s links are focused on race and support. 😉

• Coffee and support over at Book Writing World. This little 2 minute movie is charming and sweet and cute; I laughed so hard my ass disappeared.
• Racialicious’s scathing review of SATC2. More scathing than Roger Ebert’s review. Like. (p.s. While I am NOT a fan of the SATC movies to date, I am a HUGE fan of the tv series).
• Important post on how to read and respond to literature of color over at Racialicious (my favorite new blog discovery this week, can you tell?).
• Via 8asians.com: Olivia Munn debuts as Sr. Asian Correspondent on The Daily Show (reporting on “The Spilling Fields”–how the BP oil spill gush/tragedy/nightmare has affected Vietnamese fishermen in the Gulf)
• A pretty good litmag list!
• Thoughtful article on Daniel Dae Kim (that’s the dude who played Jin on L O S T) on SFGate’s Asian Pop.
• The “I SUCK” club of writing, as detailed by Elena Mauli Shapiro
• A great round up of revision advice, some of the most reasonable insight I’ve read in awhile about editing and revision
• And a last minute addition that is a must read for anyone interested in joining a dialogue about what MFA programs can and cannot do, and the start of a dialogue about privilege in MFA programs: Tayari Jones shares with her readers snippets of Danielle Evans’s very “Smart Conversations About MFA Programs.

Happy clicking and reading!

Links

More luscious links.

• I love the Alphabet Meme (writing blog posts about a subject starting with each letter, and going through, the alphabet). One of the best posts I’ve read so far is Fog City Writer’s K is for Korean Fish Market.
• P.s. Fog City Writer also has a great list of links this month.
• Going through revision? Tayari Jones has a great post on reading your editorial letter.
• Ouch. The truth hurts. Howard Junker’s blunt reply to assigned submissions.
• The Atlantic Summer Writing issue is out, with an article by Richard Bausch on “How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons.” Tongue firmly in cheek.
• Writers eat. Writers like to reward themselves with treats for chapters, revisions, word counts, submissions completed and reached. Or in my case, for no reason at all, as my novel languishes and gathers dust, awaiting my return for its revision. (Have I told you? I am REALLY SCARED and FREAKED OUT by revision. I have extended my vacation from novel revision). My apple cider doughnut craving squished, I now have a new food craving, Coconut & Lime’s dark and stormy cupcakes.
• How to lose blog readers over at Writerland.
• The old is old, and the new is new. Old/new blog rules (i.e., outdated blog rules and new rules to replace them). I hate “rules” for doing this or that, but this is a list that has a lot of common sense.
• Elizabeth Stark has an amazing video on How to Finish Writing Your Book over at Book Writing Secrets. I learned that I need a ton more support, because all I do is bash myself psychologically all day and cannot stop (maybe why revision is so daunting for me. I keep wanting to ruin myself). Sample quote:
  

  “The #1 reason people don’t finish their book is because they don’t understand their own writing process…apply your organic process to your writing.”

• I’m not here, but maybe you are. 10 questions to ask an agent before you sign.
• One of my Famous Writer professors told me in a flat and unimpressed voice (with what I remember as a fleck of pity), “That’s still a rejection” after I waved one of the famous AGNI literary rejections that say, “Please submit again. This is not our usual rejection.” Oh. That was true. Bubble popped but truth shone on me. Here’s more of the same blunt advice, as told by Betsy Lerner, literary agent. A rejection is a rejection is a rejection.
• And after my link on rejection…Just for laughs (esp funny if you have either a Korean mother, or something similar to one): A funny email from a Korean mother who’s learning to use email, who rarely writes English. (For the record, my mother, who is highly educated but educated in Korea, also writes very similar emails to me).

Links

Links, links, links:

• Emily Raboteau, author of The Professor’s Daughter and someone who happens to be the fiancée of my old professor and friend, Victor LaValle, creates a room of her own. It’s BEAUTIFUL!
• James Franco’s short story in Esquire is bringing out the critic in all of us–one large workshop, with The Rejectionist chiming in.
• The chances your short story collection will be published; not a pretty picture.
• When I’m feeling blue about my novel–and yes, currently, I’m feeling VERY blue about my novel revision (downright suicidal at times), I remember Cormac McCarthy’s interview with the WSJ, in which he says, “I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.”
• How to correctly pronounce writers’ names. I was personally mispronouncing many of them. Whew, now I stand corrected!

Links and a mood check

Links, again.

• Roger Ebert’s memoir piece about his father touched me. I like when people write about families.
• Hilarious sketch about a glaring plot hole in Lord of the Rings, a plot hole that my husband and I have been kvetching over for years.
• Another sketch about that same plot hole in Lord of the Rings. Even more irreverent.
• An Open Letter to the Nurse Who Gave Me an Enema Bottle and Told Me To Do It Myself While I was High on Morphine by Kelly Oxford. I think the title explains itself.
• tshirts for writers. I especially like, “I’m writing you into my next novel. Your character will meet a painful, violent death. Have a nice day.”
• Andrew Whitacre told me about these apple cider donuts, lauded as amazing. I want. I could feed an entire novel off of these and reward myself a donut for everytime I finish, or finish revising, a chapter.
• New Yorker interview with Junot Díaz on writing / Yunior / “The Pura Principle”. I love Junot.
• Update 3/30: One of my favorite literary blogs, Editorial Ass, got its 500,000th hit today.

Facing the novel is difficult. It’s so difficult that I will often do a million other difficult and heartbreaking things before I’ll face my novel. Like teach. Being a teacher is teaching me that not everyone is cut out for academics, and not everyone will even have an ounce of love for the thing I love (reading and writing), and not everyone can be saved, but it’s my job to inspire anyway. Sometimes no one is following me because they don’t want to go where I’m going, so I have to go back and fetch them and usher them forward. Sometimes someone will say “I quit” and that’s possibly the worst feeling for both them and for me, and I will want to quit, too. But I have to continue to inspire.

Facing the novel is difficult. But I love it anyway. Making headway on my revision–very very slow headway. But making headway.

Links

• Intern’s list of the “Ten Best Things You Can Do For Your Novel”
• Joy Castro hits the nail on the head with a letter addressed, “Dear Hegemony”
• Speaking of hegemony…Jackson Bliss bravely iterates his encounters with the literary hegemony; he received a litmag rejection that states, “I don’t see why race matters here…”
• Michael Chabon gives his take on the Bay Area lit scene; so refreshing in a world that is all, “NYC NYC NYC!” (I love New York City, but it can’t be the only place in the world for writers).
• It’s writing colony season and thus the following is a perfectly timed and comprehensive blog post by Nova, on Writers Colonies. And ahem, yours truly contributed to the post about my time at Hedgebrook.
• Since it’s writing colony season, might as well dredge up a guest post I wrote over at Writerland about various writing residencies and conferences.

Links

Links…

• When I get discouraged about how hard it is to write a novel, I read my notes from workshop with Junot. When that’s not enough, I also read what he said on Oprah.com.
• The widely read Ten Rules for Writing Fiction Part 1 and Part 2. (but be careful, instead of inspiring me, the lists put me in a writing death spiral). Sample with a small bite. If you find yourself wanting to tear your novel into bits and find yourself mentally constipated, STOP reading. Follow with Milk of Magnesia or Castor Oil…(a friend of mine pointed out that “rules for writing” is kind of ridiculous).
• But–my friend Elena Shapiro felt inspired by the lists and made her own.
• I like to read my friend Scott’s blog. He is a doctor who refuses to call himself a writer, but I think he’s a fantastic writer. His post about his “Bavarian Adventure” is funny as hell, and touching as hell.
• I’m up at I Am Korean American.
• Congratulations to friends Yiyun Li, Nina LaCour, and Novella Carpenter for Northern California Book Award nominations!
• brilliant insight from Elizabeth Stark: “…writing is the only art where people want not to have to practice.”
• Not writerly but funny. Writers need to laugh, too. Presidential Reunion w Ferrell/Dubya, Carvey/Bush Sr., Hammond/Clinton, Chase/Ford, Akroyd/Carter, Jim Carrey/spirit of Reagan.
• Andrew Whitacre shares an incredible poem by Jack Gilbert. It was just what I needed to read the other day.
• Not about books or writing…but hey, most writers drink milk, right? So, um…Where is my milk from?
• I love Seoul and this is a fantastic perspective on Seoul by the author of Absurdistan
• I may love Seoul, but I’m obsessed with North Korea. Here’s a post about a Sunday drive through Pyongyang. Literally. The dude is taking a Sunday drive through Pyongyang.

Links

Links and odds and ends, to share…

• Yo, writers of color…VONA is an amazing, lifechanging experience for writers of color. I highly recommend this writers conference. Application deadline is April 7, 2010.
• A bit of advice from Mat Johnson to book club readers.
• Despite having an MFA, you still have to sit down and do the work. Lots of work: an LA Times article on writing career.
• Take care of your body, and your body will take care of you. Olympic athlete and ice dancer Tanith Belbin decides to take care of her body and voila: it begins to perform. This only reminds me of how I used to starve myself to maintain a size 4, and wondered why it was I was always tired, depressed, and unable to focus on my schoolwork. Duh.
• Alex Chee’s “100 Things About A Novel, Part 3
• Top 100 Writing Blogs

Links

Some links I want to share:

• Alex Chee has Part 1 of “100 Things About A Novel” up on his blog, Koreanish. If you are a friend of a writer, please note numbers 16 and 17. (i.e., in my own words: don’t ask us how that novel is going–we’ll let you know when we’re ready to talk about it. And when we want to talk about it, get REALLY EXCITED FOR US!)
• In related news, my favorite videoclip of all time is the following from “Family Guy” (it used to be my cellphone ringer). Writers and friends of writers the world over will wince and chuckle at Brian’s novel (“How’s uh…how’s that novel coming along…nice little narrative, beginning and end, yah? Some enemies become friends, friends become enemies… yah?You know, that novel you’ve been working on for..uh…3 years?”)
  

• Meghan asks if an MFA is really necessary over at Writerland
• Nova doesn’t talk about her novel-in-progress.
• Jackson Bliss is undaunted by rejections–I want whatever you’re drinking, brother!
• Edwidge Danticat, Haitian American writer, has a tragic and beautiful essay in the New Yorker on Haiti, her family, and the earthquake.
• The shiba inu puppycam is back! New litter. Cuteness. It will make you forget about all your problems. Better than drugs.
• Janet Reid, literary agent, provides a chart on what you need before you query.