Writing Prompt: Turn On Your Telly!

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It’s always good to have a few reliable writing prompts up your sleeve. The best are flexible and new every time you try them – something you can use over and over again. Here’s one such writing prompt that you can retry as many times as you like:

Turn on your TV

Your idiot box may not be so stupid! Turn on the telly and write down the first sentence (or partial sentence) that you hear and use this line as inspiration for a story or poem.

The great thing about this writing prompt is that if you want to give it another go, just turn the TV off and flick back on again. Change the channel or flick on at different times of day for new lines and new prompts.

If none of the first lines you hear inspire you, watch any program for a few minutes and keep an ear out for any interesting dialogue. Choose something that grabs you, and go with it.

Hazard Warning

Keep in mind the reason for switching on the box, and don’t get bogged down or distracted watching the latest rerun of an old drama, soap or quiz show. Stay focused, keep your attention on finding that writing prompt, perhaps with pen and paper in hand, so that you remember to press the off switch as soon as you’ve got one.

Happy writing!

Via: https://https://writersedit.com/1677/resources-for-writers

15 Things Book-Lovers Do Better Than Anyone Else

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book lovers

In some ways, book-lovers are just like ordinary people. We do things like talk and walk around and eat bread. But hang around a true book-lover for long enough, and you’ll start to notice a few key differences. For example, where a normal pedestrian might spend their money on rent or food, a book-lover prefers to live in a large cardboard box surround entirely by hardcovers. Book-lovers will frequently claim to be “bummed” that they can’t make it to your boyfriend’s cover band competition, when in fact they are quite content to stay home and read. There are also a few hidden talents that all book-lovers possess, so here are several things that book-lovers do better than anyone else.

Of course, book-lovers tend to keep their secret superpowers pretty quiet most of the time. We’re not going around bragging about our ability to find 99p paperbacks within a five mile radius of any given location. We’re not trying to make other people feel bad, just because we’re better at eating spaghetti while reading without getting sauce on the pages. And we’d definitely never let anyone know how good we at rereading the same book over and over again without ever getting bored.

But just in case you need a reminder, here are a few things that book-lovers do better:

1. Notice every change between book and movie

Even if we like the film adaptation, most book-lovers take intense mental (or literal) notes on every scene, character, and line of dialogue that’s different. We might forget birthdays and keys, but we remember every Ron line that was inexplicably given to Hermione in the movie. Same goes for TV shows. Don’t watch Game of Thrones with me unless you want to hear my lengthy feelings about the changes to the Dorne plot line.

2. Pull all-nighters

If the book is good enough, book-lovers have the ability to go for long periods of time without food, sleep, or social interaction. All we need is a flashlight and a novel, and we’re happy until dawn. We might not be great at showing up to work on time the next morning, but we don’t let a little thing like sleep deprivation get in the way of reading.

3. Concentrate while on the train/bus/airplane

So what if we miss a stop every once in a while? Book-lovers are excellent at shutting out the so-called “real world.” We might prefer peace and quiet, but in a pinch we can read just about anywhere (which also makes us excellent at avoiding eye contact with strangers).

4. Keep a well-loved book together by sheer force of willpower

What some people consider a loose pile of pages, we consider a beloved member of the family. Some book-lovers are more precious with their books than others, but all book-lovers are naturally gifted at nursing damaged and “well-loved” books through multiple re-reads. Tape is a book-lover’s best friend.

5. Daydream

Even when book-lovers aren’t actively reading, we have some pretty finely-tuned imaginations. It’s hard to read a lot without becoming a thoughtful, creative person in the process. Especially for fiction junkies, all that literature gives your mind the fuel it needs to stare dreamily out the window on a rainy day, or to spend a calculus lecture thinking deeply about being married to Mr. Darcy.

6. Follow two (or five) plots at once

Some book-lovers are strictly one-book-at-a-time readers… but most of us have developed a talent for jumping from plot to plot without skipping a beat. We’ve go our ongoing re-reads, our book club reads, our new releases in hardcover, and our pocket sized paperbacks, for when you don’t want to carry a big bag. And we can tell you exactly what’s going on in all of them.

7. Balance books in weird positions

Of course, book-lovers prefer to read in a cozy chair or on a picturesque park bench under a cherry tree. But we make do. We’re all excellent at balancing books while eating, cooking, exercising, brushing our teeth, and doing all those other inconvenient things we frequently have to do when we’re right in the middle of a great chapter.

8. Apply literature to life

Sometimes it’s frustrating to be a book-lover. You just want to explain how Shakespeare, or George R.R. Martin, or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie perfectly encapsulates all of your feelings about a particular political issue, but other people don’t seem to get it. That’s OK, book-lovers. Your ability to see how literature reflects real life and visa versa is actually a skill, and you’re not nuts to think that books might help you better understand the real world. Fiction does make you more empathetic, after all.

9. Find the perfect reading spot

Readers just have sixth sense for finding cozy reading spots. Everywhere we go, we’re low-key checking out coffee shops, parks, and window seats for maximum reading coziness. Add a cup of tea and a purring cat, and we have engineered peak reading comfort.

10. Walk and read

Walking and reading is an activity that should only be attempted by veteran book-lovers. But for those elite few, walking and reading is as natural as walking and talking. Just make sure you look both ways at the crossroad, if you’re planning to try this one at home.

11. Write

Not every book-lover has to be an aspiring author themselves. But most readers just tend to be better writers: whether it’s writing a story, a blog, or a text message, readers have an innate sense of language, imagery, and where to put commas.

12. Fall madly in love with fictional characters

OK, so this one may not be a talent per say… but book-lovers most certainly do it better than anyone else. Literary crushes are intoxicating, because the reader has total control over imagining what their dream date looks like, how they wear their hair, how they smell, and so on. Step aside, people crushing on TV characters.

13. Budget for maximum book purchasing

Look, we go to the library. We borrow books from our friends. We prowl the used bookstore. But sometimes you just need to shell out for a new release, and that’s where book-lovers become budgeting experts. We’ll gladly sacrifice eating out, fancy cocktails, and possibly electricity if we can get our hands on that shiny new hardcover.

14. Find creative book storage solutions

Those shelves fill up quickly, man. And then we’ve got to get creative. Any book-lover knows the struggle of trying to fit an infinite number of books into a finite amount of space. Luckily, most of us are brilliant when it comes to stashing books under the bed, in the unused oven, and behind the books that are already on the shelf (double-shelving, anyone?).

15. Read

Well, duh. But some book-lovers don’t realize just how good they are at reading. Reading is a skill. Understanding what you read, rather than just skimming, is an art. Not everyone is good at translating squiggles on a page into thrilling adventures and sweeping romance. A book is really only as good as the reader’s imagination, and book-lovers are pretty great when it comes to imagining.

Via: https://www.bustle.com/p/15-things-book-lovers-do-better-than-anyone-else

Misprint Legends: Famous Typos from James Joyce to JK Rowling

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Typos

Today on Writer’s Blog, an article from the Guardian that proves typos can be worth their weight in gold – as long as your famous, that is!

Proofreaders may be worth their weight in gold to authors, but their oversights have proved lucrative for some lucky readers of JK Rowling. On Thursday, an uncorrected proof of her debut novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with the writer’s name was misspelled as “JA Rowling”, became the latest muddled copy to fetch four figures at auction.

It sold for just under £10,000, which means it is not the most valuable mistake in the boy wizard’s canon. That honour goes to a rare first edition with the word “philosopher” misspelled on the back cover, which was snapped up in 2016 by a London-based businessman for £43,750.

Mistakes in early editions may add value to Rowling’s work, but they rarely do more than make the reader laugh, which is the true value of a well-placed typo.

One of the best literary malapropisms in print appears in Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 classic An American Tragedy. In a passage of which Bad Sex award-winner Morrissey would be proud, two characters dance “harmoniously abandoning themselves to the rhythm of the music – like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea”. Dreiser omits whether those chips were served with curry sauce.

The American novelist is not the only literary heavyweight to litter his work with errors. The most shocking thing about Henry Miller’s tale of sex and seduction in Paris, Tropic of Cancer, was the number of mistakes to be found in the 1961 first edition. In first editions of The Road, Cormac McCarthy offers this inexplicable image: “A moment of panic before he saw him walking along the bench downshore with the pistol hanging in his hand, his head down.” For “bench” read “beach”.

Some apparent typos are deliberate – though it can be hard to tell. Given that much of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake makes little sense anyway, it is hard to spot an error by Joyce’s friend Samuel Beckett, to whom he dictated the novel. During one of their dictation sessions, Joyce answered a knock at the door with “Come in” – which Beckett promptly wrote down. Despite making even less sense than much that had gone before, Joyce liked the error and left it in the final version.

Whether by gods of literature or the God of the Bible, mistakes have a habit of appearing in books like molehills in a lawn. The most notorious one in the Good Book appeared in a 1631 edition, known since as the Wicked Bible because the typesetters failed to add the word “not” to the 10 Commandments, leaving the pious free to steal, murder and commit adultery.

But the king of all typo-riddled books is Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel Freedom. HarperCollins wound up pulping the entire first print run of 80,000 copies after it emerged that an early version of the book was sent to the printers by mistake. As a result, the book teemed with hundreds of mistakes in grammar, spelling and even characterisation.

The Corrections author discovered the catastrophe surrounding his eagerly anticipated book in a brutally public way. Recording a reading for the BBC current affairs show Newsnight, Franzen came to an abrupt halt and said: “Sorry, I’m realising to my horror that there’s a mistake here that was corrected early in the galleys and it’s still in the fucking hard cover of the book.”

Anyone who held on to that edition of the book would have been better exchanging it. As rare book dealer Rick Gekoski predicted in the Guardian at the time the big print run meant that the mistakes had “zero premium … I wouldn’t give you 50p extra”, he said. Seven years on, he has been proved right: the most valuable first editions of Freedom that appear on Abebooks are copies published as the author intended.

Via: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/misprint-the-legends-famous-typos-from-james-joyce-to-jk-rowling

Your First Chapter: Getting Past The Fear

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ChapterOneFear holds a lot of writers back from getting their work into the world, and when you’re writing a book the fear of the first chapter can stop you in your tracks.

Much of this fear comes from pressure for the first chapter to be perfect. It is drilled into us that first impressions are everything, especially when it means keeping your manuscript out of the slush pile.

But if you don’t get started, you’ll never get going. So here are a few tips for pushing past the fear of failure and writing your first chapter.

Before the First Word

Think about your concept. No matter where it came from: based on a real event, in a dream, a fairy story, your imagination, whatever, you will need to flesh it out a bit and think about where it is going. Do some research into the area, and allow your concept to morph as it takes shape.

Coming up with the plot is the most difficult part, because our ideas change and grow all the time. But if you do a little planning on your structure and develop your characters, the shape of your novel will began to reveal itself. And doing this beforehand will make the actual writing process easier.

Putting Pen to Paper

From all your planning, the obvious place to start should present itself. Try not to overthink it – just start writing and see where it takes you. If you hit a dead end, don’t panic. Back up a bit a try again, or put it in a draw for a while and then come back to it with fresh eyes.

Personally, I have found giving my ideas time to marinade really helps my process. I reworked my plot, my world, some of my characters, and prepared to take that leap into a new first chapter.

Advice

There is a lot of advice out there about right/wrong ways to start a book. My advice is: just start writing. If you’ve got off on the wrong foot, the book will tell you. Sure, it may set you back a little, but you’ll learn from that experience and your novel will be better for it.

Think about how your favourite books and films start. Do they jump right into the acton, or is there some breathing space before the story begins? If you can imagine an intriguing scene that doesn’t give the game away, you’re on the right track.

Don’t let the pressure of publishers, agents, or readers intimidate you. First chapters are scary and exciting (like the first summertime leap into a swimming pool) but the great thing about words is that you can change them.

The revision and editing processes are so long that chances are, your first chapter will transform many times from your first version of it. We revise for a reason, so don’t stress about the minor things just yet.

In Retrospect

Although it can be hard figuring out where and how to start, the re-starting of my draft made me realise that the little things don’t matter (yet) and that first drafts never come out perfectly polished the first go.

My biggest lesson: don’t try to write the perfect first draft, because it’s like a unicorn – it only exists in my imagination.

It doesn’t matter that a chapter feels stale, or that the wording for some descriptions aren’t quite right, or that your tense keeps shifting.

Words are flexible: they can be edited, moved around, deleted, and swapped. Just get yourself past the first hurdle and keep pushing forward.

What’s important is that you write, not hide behind the fear that your first chapter may not be entirely perfect just yet.

Via: http://writersedit.com/getting-past-fear-first-chapter/

What Your Reading Style Says About Your Personality

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reading style

If you’ve ever encountered a fellow reader in a classroom or a book club or living in the walls of an independent bookshop, then you probably know that there are many different types of readers. And I don’t just mean that different readers favour different book genres — people can enjoy the same book in very different ways. You might be a highly organized, one chapter per night kind of reader, or you might be the kind of person who picks up a novel and doesn’t put it down until you’ve reached the last page, dehydrated and sobbing. The good news is that there’s no one right way to be a book-lover, so here’s what your reading style says about you.

Of course, most of us dabble in multiple reading styles. When I’m reading a biography, for example, I’ll read a chapter or two during my commute and spend a lot of time thinking quietly about the impact of one individual on the grand course of history. But if I’m reading the latest bestselling fiction thriller novel, I’ll hole up in my room until I’m finished, and then spend a lot of time discussing it with everyone I know until they stop taking my calls.

So check out your these different reading styles, and what they say about you:

1. The Cozy Reader

You don’t even think about cracking open that book until you’ve got your slippers, sweatpants, blankets, and warm drink of choice firmly in place. You like your reading time to be quiet and solitary (unless you have a best friend or significant other willing to cuddle in silence). You’re religious about taking off your pants and/or bra as soon as you get home, your bed is the most comfortable place in the world, you prefer cats to dogs, and you check “interested” instead of “going” on all Facebook invites, just in case you’d rather stay home.

2. The Commuter

You have to take the train/bus/ferry everyday anyway. Why not put that time to good use? You’re a pro at blocking out all sights and smells while you read, and you can balance a book, a bagel, and a cup of coffee while holding onto a pole, wedged between two business bros. You’re not afraid to be judged for the books you read in public, and you’re excellent at making the most of your time.

3. The Speed Reader

You devour books whole. You were always getting in trouble as a kid for reading at the table, or under your desk during class, but all that youthful reading gave you the ability to rip through paragraphs in record time. You feel like you’ve wasted a week if you weren’t able to make it through a single book, and no matter how fast you read it always seems like your TBR list is getting longer. At least once, you’ve started a “new” book, only to realise that you’ve read it before (it’s hard to keep track!).

4. The Book Clubber

When you finish a book, you want to talk about it. You need to talk about it, preferably over wine with people you like. It doesn’t matter if you loved or hated the book, you have opinions to share! If you read a book outside of book club, you might even venture online just to discuss it with someone. You also enjoy bite-sized finger foods, starting debates, and throwing themed birthday parties for your friends/pets.

5. The Digital Reader

You’re all about Kindles and E-readers of every kind. You like having all your books in one place, especially when you travel. You never type when you can speak into your phone, you own real headphones, not earbuds, and you have a strong opinion about the proper pronunciation of “gif.”

6. The Series Junkie

Sure, you’ll read the occasional stand alone book, but deep down you’re a die-hard series junkie. Nothing gets your heart racing like seeing “Book One” on the cover of that new novel you just purchased. You’re enthusiastic and deeply protective of the books and people that you love. You may or may not own several mugs/key chains/candles based on your favourite series, you’ve read at least one piece of fanfiction, and you always display your books in order on the shelf.

7. The Re-Reader

Your favourite books are held together with tape and sheer willpower. You could probably recite Harry Potter from memory. You know that re-reading isn’t for everyone, but you secretly believe that you haven’t really read a book until you’ve read it at least twice. You’re big on posting Throwback Thursday pics, and you’re not afraid to get a little nostalgic about everything from The Baby-sitters’ Club to Furbies.

8. The Slow & Steady Reader

Reading isn’t all about speed. You don’t race to the last page, but you still enjoy a good book. You might leisurely work your way through an 800 page novel over the course of the year, and that’s still quite an accomplishment. You choose your words carefully, but when you speak, people listen (your friends won’t let you pick the restaurant anymore, though, because no one has that kind of time).

9. The Scribbler

Some people call it desecrating a book, but you call it taking notes! When you read, you simply have to underline and highlight and comment on every sentence that strikes you. You’re all about writing in the margins (what else are the margins for?) and collecting quotes. You’ve caught multiple typos before. You jiggle your foot a lot when you try to sit still, you were always the first to raise your hand in English class, and you have extensive thoughts about why that pivotal scene got cut out of the HBO adaptation of your favourite book.

10. The Audio Addict

You have no time for those people who don’t think that audiobooks “count” as “real books.” If you’re walking or cleaning or driving, you better believe that you’re listening to an audiobook. You can read so many more books this way! You have a very active imagination, and you sometimes find yourself daydreaming in your favourite book narrator’s voice.

11. The Book Juggler

Why read one book at once when you could read five? You’re constantly starting new books, and you’re pretty adept at holding multiple plots in your brain at once. You’re a habitual multi-tasker, you bounce between multiple social groups, and your plans are sometimes just a tad more ambitious than you have the time for.

12. The Night Owl

You don’t necessarily plan to stay up all night reading…but here you are at four in the morning, still flipping pages. You’ll go days without picking up a single book, and then read two in one night. You’ll try to stick to one chapter before bed, and wind up reading ten. Something about nighttime just makes it easier to get sucked in! You have a similar problem with binge watching TV shows and eating all the Girl Scout cookies in one sitting, but you’re also a lot of fun when it comes to spontaneous road trips and late night heart to hearts.

***

Via: https://www.bustle.com/p/what-your-reading-style-says-about-your-personality

Top 10 Reasons Books Are Rejected by Publishers

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BookCover-rejected

The following article is provided by Keller Media as a public service. It is intended to help, support, guide and inspire writers to achieve their publishing goals. Wendy Keller is a Literary Agent who wrote this list for writers of non-fiction. However, after reading it, I would say most of her points apply to fiction writers too. I would advise every writer to read it, and make sure they aren’t doing anything on this list – regardless of your genre of writing. Enjoy!

It breaks my heart when would be authors write me back after my agency has rejected their forlorn book or book proposal. They often say, “What’s wrong with all you agents? Don’t you know good work when you see it?” Those are the angry types. Or the misguided but hopeful ones tell me, “I read that Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield were rejected (fill in the blank with any number) times before ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ became a worldwide best seller…I’m going to keep sending this out until one of you…”

Jack is a client of mine and he and Mark are both friends. I know some things new writers don’t know – basically, that they improved the content AND proved the concept by selling books themselves before Health Communications even took a small chance on them. Of course, there are several dozen stories of other authors throughout history whose books went on to be hugely successful despite original rejections – e.g., Dr Seuss, William Saroyan, etc.

Here’s the big difference between those eventual successes and 99.9% of the rest of the continually rejected books: those authors DID something (other than complain) while they were being rejected. And at this point in the publishing industry, the something you should be doing includes building a platform.

My agency sees many thousands of projects per year but I sell only 25-40 books per year – because most of what we’re sent is economically worthless. Why are so many rejected? I’ve noticed that most of the books we reject are rejected by all other agents and publishers too. There are REASONS for this!

Here are the Top Ten Reasons Authors Get Repeatedly Rejected:

1. You are writing on a topic that is glutted already – and you are saying nothing that is NDBM (New, Different, Better or offers the reader something More)

2. You are offering your content to agents who do not handle books like yours. This happens when you think bulk sending is going to increase your success.

3. You are a poor writer, use poor grammar or your work is rife with errors. We are professionals, you be too please.

4. You are evidently crazy. About 20% of everything my agency sees falls into this category. “I am channeling Elvis and he has an opinion on World Peace…”

5. You have no platform. That means you came up with your book idea inside your own ivory tower. You have not taken the effort to test it against the real world by building a social media following, getting paid speeches, doing any blogging or columns, etc. on the topic. (I’d say 80% of the nonfiction most agents reject happens for this one reason.)

6. You do not have any credentials related to the topic of your book. While the fact that you are now a successful immigrant to the USA may be amazing to your friends and family back in your native country, the fact that you bought a house, a car and put two kids through college doesn’t make you an expert on how to succeed in America unless you actually have helped others to achieve similar goals. Likewise, the fact you survived a bad divorce doesn’t make you an MFT or an attorney or even an expert on the topic.

7. You believe your life story has worldwide appeal. Writing a book as a way of sorting out your own personal history is an excellent therapeutic technique. It is rarely worthy of publication, however, unless you have been able to build a platform/association/charity/group of others who are helped directly by your story and/or methodology.

8. You are vehement, negative, angry, dismissive, rude, impolite, condescending, curt, vituperative, or churlish in the way you approach agents. We work on straight commission – nobody will put up with your behavior.

9. You plead and whine. This includes the surprising number of people whose (bad) book idea we’ve rejected who write back to beg, “If you sell this, I’ll give you DOUBLE the commission.” This one makes me smile, because $0 x 2 = $0.

10. You haven’t done a speck of research. You don’t know the competing books, you don’t know how to market a book, you don’t know how agents work, you don’t know how publishing works, and/or you have no clue how to prepare a book proposal. This a profession. The lone fact that your native language is English doesn’t mean you will succeed as a published author.

Here’s the weird corollary: Agents typically scramble and even politely “fight” over projects that are salable. If no one is even interested in – much less fighting – over yours, there’s a 100% chance that one of the ten reasons above applies in your case. As salespeople in a highly competitive industry, we are always urgently seeking new inventory. Provide it, you’ll get our undivided attention and a nice offer from a good publisher.

***

Wendy Keller has been a literary agent since 1989. In that time, Keller Media, Inc. has been pitched on +250,000 book projects. Writers who insist that she’s “wrong” about any of the 10 reasons above are typically those who fit into one of those categories themselves – and who end up unsuccessfully self-publishing or just grumbling for the rest of their lives. It doesn’t have to be that way! Adapt, learn and achieve your dreams!

Via: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/the-top-10-reasons-most-books-dont-attract-publishers

Not the Booker Prize 2017 | The Guardian

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Not the booker prize

Today, on Writer’s Blog – The Guardian tell us all about another year of Not The Booker Prize, and how you can get involved by nominating your favourite book:

The Not the Booker prize is back and it’s nine years old – old enough now that I really should stop expressing surprise at its continuing development. If it were a child, it would be safely past the stage of sighing heavily when I remark how much it’s grown. It would simply roll its eyes and walk off. And we don’t want that, because the award remains a source of fascination, intrigue and – best of all – unexpected and wonderful novels.

This year’s search starts right here. You can nominate any book eligible for for this year’s Man Booker prize – that is to say basically any novel originally written in English, by a writer of any nationality, published in the UK between 1 October 2016 and 30 September 2017. (As with the Man Booker, US authors are now allowed).

Way back in 2009, we set up the prize to see if the wider reading community could do any better than the official Booker jury, asking: “Does the blogging crowd have more wisdom than the panel? Can we come up with a more interesting shortlist than the judges? Can we pick a better winner? Or will we, indeed, choose the same one?”

On all those questions the jury is still out. Well, apart from the last one, which so far has been a big, fat “No”. We’ve always had a great competition and spotlit some superb books. But we’ve also ended up reading some stinkers. That in itself has been fascinating, provoking important discussions about the nature of prizes and online democracy, about book marketing and self-promotion. It has also, let’s be honest, been a big part of the fun.

Yet while all that debate is worthwhile and enjoyable, our ultimate aim is still to discover fine books. So this year we’re following an excellent suggestion from Fourpaws, in the hope of tipping the scales ever so slightly more in favour of quality. The longlist proceeds as normal in the comments below this post; a great, joyful free-for-all to which everyone can contribute. And a shortlist of five books will be chosen as they were last year, by asking you to vote for two books (from different publishers) that you’d like to champion. But! A sixth book will be chosen by last year’s fine panel of judges. We’ll be asking the 2016 judges to nominate a book they think merits a wild-card entry – a route straight on to the 2017 shortlist. Then we’ll see how that book stacks up against those chosen by the traditional process.

Once we’ve got a shortlist of six books, we’ll read each in turn, at the rate of roughly one a week, and post pieces inviting further discussion, debate, and hopefully a bit of praise and a lot of love. Then we’ll have the final vote, in combination with a new panel of judges chosen, as always, from those who contribute to the discussion of the shortlisted books. Then – oh delight! – the winner will receive a rare and precious Guardian mug. If you’d like to find out more about becoming a judge, or anything else, then just check out the competition’s deadly serious terms and conditions.

All set? Then let’s hit it. To vote, please leave a comment at the bottom of the Guardian’s article by following this link, including the word “nomination”, with the title and author of one book you think should be considered for the 2017 Not the Booker prize. If you can supply a publication date and the UK publisher, that would be very useful. Nominations will remain open until 23.59 BST on Sunday 30 July.

Happy voting!

Via: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/jul/17/not-the-booker-prize-2017

Writing Prompt: Book Spine Poetry

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Book-Spine-Poetry-1024x634

There is beauty and writing in everything, and the world around us is an excellent source of poetry if you take the time to see it… A lot of time and energy goes into selecting a book title, for example. It must encapsulate the novel yet leave desirable mystery, it must sound intriguing, it must be a piece of art all on its own.

This writing prompt is a poetic exercise in finding beauty in your bookshelf.

Book Spine Poetry

The idea of book spine poetry began in 1993 with artist Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books project, with a recent online resurgence from people having a go at home. I thought this would be the perfect writing prompt to get your creativity flowing, especially when you’re not in the working mood.

This is a kind of poetry that even writers who devoutly protest they “are not poets” can have a bit of fun with. Scour your bookshelf for inspiration and put some pretty words together. It’s as simple as that. Here’s what you get from the picture above:

Beloved, pale fire

In the sky of a lion

The passion

On the road

To the lighthouse

It turns out that this writing prompt is trickier than it first appears, but the scope for creation is wide open and it’s a quick and playful exercise that really makes you think about sentence structure and deeper meanings within words.

Happy writing!

Via: https://writersedit.com/weekly-writing-prompts-21/

 

7 Books That Are More Feminist Than You’d Think

Posted in Blog, Books by

wuthering heights emily bronte

Reading while also being a feminist can be a demoralising endeavor. It feels like for every brilliant piece of feminist writing, there’s an unassailable mountain of misogynistic nonsense (I’m looking at you, Ernest Hemingway). So much of what we read in secondary school literature, for example, is written by white men, about white men, and for white men, and it starts to get exhausting. Can we only read books of essays on feminist theory for the rest of time? Are any other books safe? Well, these books might not change your entire gender-based worldview, but they certainly all have feminist messages buried in there somewhere. Here are a few books that turn out to be more feminist than you’d think.

I mean sure, we can all enjoy the occasional story about hunting lions in Africa with your shrewish wife, but over half of the planet’s population is made up of genders other than men. It’s tempting to give up on male authors entirely and go live underground and/or only read Ella Enchanted on repeat for the rest of your life. But if that’s sounding a little unrealistic, here are a few books that have more to say on women’s rights than you might have guessed:

1. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by William Shakespeare

Sappy romance between hormonal teens…or secret feminist manifesto? Romeo and Juliet has quite the reputation for being a classic love story, but the way it deals with gender is very nearly revolutionary. Despite being a teen boy, Romeo is the emotional, romantic, sensitive character, who kills himself using poison, which is traditionally a “woman’s weapon.” Juliet, on the other hand, is a thoughtful, logical teenage girl, who has a whole monologue about how excited she is to have sex with her boyfriend, and who stabs herself to death in a very traditionally masculine form of violence.

2. ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce

Yes, James Joyce writes a lot about dudes staring at women and yes, a lot of his fans are lit bros who’ll make you read their screenplay and then ghost you. But if you can make it through Ulysses, you just might find that Joyce is more complex than that. The book is all about Leopold Bloom, but Molly Bloom, his wife, gets the final chapter all to herself. The last few pages are a stream of consciousness monologue from Molly as she masturbates, and it’s presented as a beautiful, empowering, life-affirming event (that got the book repeatedly banned for obscenity).

3. ‘The Suffragette Scandal’ by Courtney Milan

A lot of people write off the romance genre as trashy or backwards, but there are many well-written feminist love stories out there. The Suffragette Scandal, for one, is a nuanced and sexy romance between an outspoken suffragette and a man who actually appreciates her for her wit, tenacity, and bold opinions.

4. ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ by Hanan Al-Shaykh

Like most classic folklore collections, the original One Thousand and One Nights isn’t exactly up to date on gender politics. But Hanan Al-Shaykh’s beautiful, witty re-telling of these stories manages to highlight complex women throughout. The stories are equally funny and gruesome, and at the center of all of them is young Shahrazad, spinning tales to save her life, and to protect other women from the king’s wrath.

5. ‘Persuasion’ by Jane Austen

People seem to be split on Jane Austen: either they think she’s a brilliant proto-feminist, or they dismiss her books as classic chick lit. Those “chick lit” people need to take a long hard look in the mirror and then read Persuasion. It may not have as much of a feminist following as Pride and Prejudice, but Persuasion is the most mature of Austen’s novels: the story of an old-ish young woman looking for a second chance with a man she once spurned. But more than that, our heroine is forced to deal with the existential question of her own place in society as a woman who never married (she’s a dried up old maid of 27!).

6. ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ by Lemony Snicket

I don’t know that anyone would call Lemony Snicket’s darkly humorous children’s series sexist, but it’s certainly not the book that comes to mind first in a discussion of feminist kids’ books. That’s too bad, because the Baudelaire siblings eschew traditional gender roles and deal with a lot of sexist creeps. Violet, the mechanically minded inventor, is a great example of a young women who can enjoy hair ribbons and machinery.

7. ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

When it comes to the Brontës and feminism, Jane Eyre gets most of the attention. After all, Jane Eyre is very clearly the story of one woman growing into her own independence, while Wuthering Heights is… more of a story about two awful people who love/hate each other until they angrily die. But, I’d argue that Wuthering Heights is important in part because it has an unlikable female protagonist. So many great books star antihero men, so why can’t Cathy be an antihero woman? Wuthering Heights challenges us to invest in the story of a young woman who is not particularly pleasant or nice, but who is still a fully realised individual with passions and thoughts.

Via: https://www.bustle.com/p/7-books-that-are-more-feminist-than-you-think