Friday, March 25, 2011

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, March 25, 2011

► Are you a book hoarder? Then you will understand this guy's problem.

► End your week – start your weekend – on a grace note, by reading Emily Rapp's elegant essay about how her terminally ill son's diagnosis led her "home" – in every sense of the word.

► In a Poynter interview, Frank Bruni describes how he prepared (in part) for the different challenge of writing his memoir, Born Round, after decades as a New York Times reporter, foreign bureau chief and restaurant critic: "In part I approached my own story the way I would someone else’s. To supplement my own memories I debriefed family members and friends. But mostly I took some time to read, in rapid succession, the kinds of memoirs I’d read before but never with a particular focus. I looked closely at how they were done, how they were paced, their tones. And I tried to draw from that some internal sense of how I should proceed with mine and what I wanted it to read and sound like." The rest of the interview is here.

►Penned a short line you love? Gotham Writing Workshops is running a Twitter-length contest (140 characters).

► More than two dozen AOL sites have either been shut down, or folded into similar "stronger" Huffington Post verticals. It's my understanding that these AOL sites were paying freelance contributors, so what will happen to that policy now? Will the freelance writers now be labeled bloggers, which HuffPo claims it's okay not to pay because they are "not really writers"? And what about that statement anyway?

► I recently concluded the Winter Prompts Project, emailing daily writing prompts to dozens of writers. The final prompt was, "The end of the line." In response, Stephanie Walulik, a former writing student of mine and Prompt Project participant, wrote this post on her blog – about writing, waiting, and endings.

► Have journaling fever? Or wish you did? Maybe Journalfest is for you.

►Local folks interested in online journalism might want to attend this 2-hour panel, Truth and Authenticity in News in a Digital age, at Caldwell College on April 7.

►Finally, if only every writing job ad were this honest.

Have a great weekend.

1 comment:

fullsoulahead.com said...

Wow. The Rapp essay. So sad and so beautiful.