Monthly Archives: April 2012

Mental Space for Rent

Ever since you first picked up Dorothy Parker or Jack Kerouac and fell in love with the writer’s life, you’ve had an image in your head of what it means to be “a writer.” Probably that image includes some vice (sex, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, luxury yachts) that you deserve because of all the time you […]

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Want help? Give it. Part 2.

Face it, there’s a reason you’re not getting an agent: it’s not because your writing sucks. If your writing sucked, you wouldn’t be getting encouraging emails from agents saying they are sure it will find a market at some point. You would be getting only standard boring-as-hell, form-rejection letters that probably don’t have your name […]

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Guest Blogger: FRANK HABERLE

We interrupt this two-part blog entry to bring you a quick note from Frank Haberle, last year’s Pen Parentis Writing Fellow! (It’s the last few days to submit to the 2012 Fellowship! Postmark deadline is April 18th – so get on it! Take it away, Frank!): Winning the 2011 Pen Parentis fellowship last spring came with […]

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Want help? Give it. Part 1.

Authors in grad school often make pacts like the ones in dweeby marriage movies “whichever of us gets published first will pull the other up by our coattails” (okay marriage movies have them swearing they’ll marry each other, but just go with the bloggish half-metaphor….) – point is, once one of the pair gets their […]

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Can you transition well?

Transitions.  I can’t do them. How the heck do successful writers who are parents manage to transition from working on their novel to being the person who has to pick up the kid at school on time? Here’s the scenario: I’m hard at work on a section that has been impossible, a scene in which […]

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