The Writer Edition!

Prompts, recommendations, and weirdly specific advice...

I’ll do these once every couple of weeks. We’ll mostly have the same categories each time.

A Story:

Statue of “Anonymus” in Budapest’s Városliget (City Park) by Miklós Ligeti, 1903.

This is the Hungarian statue of Anonymous. You know Anonymous; he’s written tons of your favorite stuff.

Technically, this statue represents a specific Anonymous—the anonymous notary of King Béla III. He wrote a huge history of Hungary around 1200, and we think his name started with a P. (Narrows it down!)

I’ve always loved this statue because this is EXACTLY how I look when I write. Huge, soft clothes, terrible posture, might actually be asleep. Granted, I usually choose a more comfortable chair. My hands are a little smaller.

A Resource:

We’ve had some hugely useful conversations in the past few years about the ethics and craft of writing across difference (i.e., writing characters demographically different from you, especially when you’re writing from a position of privilege). If you want more of my own thoughts on this, you can read the essay I wrote for Lit Hub in 2018, when The Great Believers first came out.

They’re good folks

But meanwhile, more practically: The folks at Writing the Other are doing amazing and specific work on providing resources, not just debate. They have on-demand classes like “Writing Native American Characters: How Not To Do A Rowling” and “Writing Deaf and Blind Characters” and “Writing Fat Characters,” all taught by people who can speak with personal authority. I was introduced to the org by founder K. Tempest Bradford, and have been SO impressed.

They’re doing a 25%-off deal right now, and you should jump on it.

A Recommendation:

If you’re a writer looking to get published and you’re NOT following Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal Substack, what are you even doing?

From the Files:

First, a confession. I write a LOT of response letters to student work, and a few years ago I realized I was writing the same things over and over. As I wrote something I knew I would use again (because I’d used it before) I started cutting these comments into a master file. That file is now 56 pages long. I always customize these paragraphs, but wow, it’s a lot easier when they’re sitting there ready to drop, customized, into a longer letter. I’m gonna drop a few here, once in a while. For now, these three:

POV SLIPS:
You have several moments where you slip out of the close-third point of view. If we’re in Jenna’s mind (she longs to see her parents, she’s tasting the cake) then it makes no sense to say “her cheeks were a brilliant red.” She can’t see her own cheeks… You’ve mostly done this with facial expressions.

BROTHER/SISTER
This wasn’t a pet peeve of mine until someone else pointed it out, but: People in fiction seem to call their siblings “brother,” “little sister,” etc. quite a lot, but I’ve never once heard someone do this in real life (to someone who was actually their sibling).

HOLOCAUST CHILD
I’m sorry to say I’ve read this scene many times before—the scene of the young child on their way to school or a friend’s house, and they see Nazis in the street, and kind of understand what they are and kind of don’t, and then something major happens—a bridge is on fire or their cousin is arrested in front of them or someone tells them some big, scary news—and they don’t get to where they’re going and run home, usually to the mother. Then they almost always overhear the mother talking on the phone or in the parlor in hushed tones.

It’s not that this wasn’t a real experience for many children, but there’s something about this particular approach that appeals to enough writers that it’s become cliché, at least to me. I imagine it’s tempting because of that contrast of innocence/horror, and because it’s a fairly manageable way to get at a holocaust story. But I wonder if you might take a different tack here.

Department of Absurdity:

Bob Archambeau is a poet. He is not kidding here.

Something to Sign Up For:

As some of you know, I’m the Artistic Director at StoryStudio Chicago, a nonprofit literary arts center. I’m so proud of everything we do, and I’ll tell you about it here sometimes… But here’s the One Big Thing you might look at right now, if you’ve completed (or soon will) a book-length manuscript.

Pub Crawl is a full month (February!) of online publishing education, with panels and classes every weeknight that you can watch live or later. We get a great community going on Slack, we support you the whole way, and we end the month with optional pitch sessions. The whole thing is $265, minus the pitches, but we also love to give scholarships. The whole point is to make publishing accessible to people who were not already invited to the latest Paris Review party.

A Way to Do Good:

Speaking of StoryStudio: A couple of weeks ago, we got the devastating news that one of my recent novel students, Ryan Letcher, had passed away suddenly. He was in the middle of working on a brilliant novel. He got married only four months earlier, and was earning a degree in social work at the University of Chicago.

The fund we've started in his name will support LGBTQ+ writers working on a book-length project.

From Ryan's husband: “Ryan was a passionate reader and writer who was dedicated to creating stories, characters, and projects that offered an authentic glimpse into the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals and our diverse community. We hope that this fund will inspire others to tell and create their own stories, and that it will continue to offer opportunities for LGBTQ+ writers and voices.”

You can donate here, and/or you can help by spreading the word.

Some Prompts:

In 2020, and again this year, I've posted one writing prompt a day on Twitter. I’ll finish out the year, but then they’re all going here, a better place. Meanwhile, some originals…

• Write the first line of a story about a fifth-grader who’s obsessed with P. T. Barnum.

• Write about the most distant relative you ever met in real life.

• The Blue Cup Coffeehouse has been hosting weekly open mics since 1992. During Covid, they went online. Now that they’re back in person, the vibe is really, really off.

But also! I have this whole store of old ones from 2020. I’ll post big batches of those for the paid subscribers who are making this newsletter endeavor financially justifiable. (Have I told you lately that I love you?) If that’s you, read on…