Roy Miller's Blog, page 311
December 30, 2016
Write free with Freewrite – The Writer
Writers of a certain age remember life before the internet – the hum of the electric typewriter, the thwack of metal type bars against a rubber roller, the astringent smell of Liquid Paper (and the mess). Most fondly, perhaps, we remember the ability to concentrate on one thing only – the page in front of us – without the temptation to check Facebook or post a new cat photo to Instagram or lose ourselves in the endless website browsing we’re convinced is “research.”
Adam Leeb and Patrick Paul, co-founders of the tech company Astrohaus, have found a way to take writers back in time to those blissful hours of single-minded focus on a manuscript. They’ve created Freewrite, billed as the world’s first smart typewriter. It’s a portable distraction-free writing tool that doesn’t allow for Internet browsing, but has WiFi capability and automatically uploads all of your drafts to the Cloud, synching them with Dropbox, Evernote, and/or Google Drive.
“I’ve always been interested in writing and super-interested in productivity,” Leeb says. He and Paul dreamed up the device while sitting across from one another in a co-working space in Detroit, Michigan. Paul mentioned the prevalence of distraction-free software on the web – apps like SelfControl and OmmWriter, which allow users to block the most tempting websites for a specific period of time.
“It started this whole conversation about the writing process,” Leeb says. “We looked at this concept of distraction-free writing and turned it into a hardware product.”
The four-pound, sleek black-and-white typewriter offers internal capability for over a million pages, a battery that lasts three to four weeks at a time, a full-sized mechanical keyboard, and a lit electronic paper screen that resembles ordinary ink on paper and allows for enhanced readability when a writer is working, say, on a beach towel in the sun.
Search the web, and you’ll find photos of Freewrite users typing away on park benches, in sunny fields, and at street-side cafes. Leeb says that younger writers, in particular, gravitate toward the device with its dearth of notifications and beeps and inbox alerts – those audio and visual distractions they’ve grown up with their entire life.
“Some people, non-writers, are quick to think Freewrite is just another hipster toy,” Leeb says. “The people who use it are writers open-minded enough to try it, people who’ve thought about their writing process deeply.”
Tim Moynihan, writing for Wired magazine, calls himself a “bona fide Freewrite fanboy. It doesn’t make the words coming out of my brain any better,” he notes, “but it makes them far more pleasurable to write.”
Feeling stuck at your desk and enslaved to all of your computer’s bells and whistles? This just may be the device you’ve been waiting for.
“People forget that we have a lot more control over our surroundings than we think,” Leeb says. “Having that ability to leave your office and take Freewrite outside is so liberating.”
Getfreewrite.com, $499.
—Contributing editor Melissa Hart is the author of Avenging the Owl (Sky Pony, 2016) and Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family (Lyons, 2014). Web: melissahart.com.
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Milo Yiannopolous Book Deal with S&S Generates Backlash
On Thursday, the Hollywood Reporter revealed that Milo Yiannopoulos, the editor of Breitbart Tech and a well-known “alt-right” pundit, had secured a $250,000 advance in a book deal with Simon & Schuster’s conservative imprint, Threshold Editions.
“I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions,” Yiannopoulos told THR. “I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building—but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.”
S&S will release Dangerous on March 14, 2017, and the book is now up on the S&S website.
“They said banning me from Twitter would finish me off,” Yiannopoulos added, referring to an incident this July, when a number of his Twitter followers engaged in targeted harrassment of actress Leslie Jones following her role in the Ghostbusters remake, which Yiannopoulos panned. (Jones temporarily left the social network due to harassment.) “Just as I predicted, the opposite has happened.”
While Yiannopoulos, whose ban is “permanent,” may be off Twitter, news of the deal prompted backlash from the book community on the social network, much of it criticizing S&S for signing Yiannopoulos. The Chicago Review of Books went so far as to say it would not review any S&S titles in 2017 as a result of the Yiannopoulos signing.
The publishing industry as of this year is 79% white. Being racist is quite profitable. https://t.co/lNo0flFAIa
— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) December 29, 2016
I am rethinking my relationship with @simonschuster #Milo
— Karen Hunter (@karenhunter) December 29, 2016
Whew. When I saw that Milo had a book deal I whispered, please don’t let it be my publisher.
— roxane gay (@rgay) December 29, 2016
Couldn’t agree more. No member of the reading community should have to fear they’ll be put in danger if their home town is on his book tour. https://t.co/1nsSLwbsnp
— Joanna Volpe (@JoSVolpe) December 29, 2016
Outrage helps sell books. Utter silence is what kills them.
— Lisa Lucas (@likaluca) December 30, 2016
That backlash is unlikely to phase Yiannopoulos.
“Every line of attack the forces of political correctness try on me fails pathetically,” he told THR. “I’m more powerful, more influential and more fabulous than ever before, and this book is the moment Milo goes mainstream.”
However, Yiannopoulos may not be so dismissive of booksellers’ reactions. While the book has risen up the charts at Amazon, at least one independent bookseller said her store will not be stocking the book. “The books my staff and I choose to place on our shelves is a reflection of our community,” said Kate Rattenborg, owner of Dragonfly Books in Decorah, Iowa. “Our community is not a community of hate, and I will not provide shelf space for a book where the author has risen to notoriety based on his discriminatory harassment, online bullying, and striking fear in others.”
After being reached for comment, S&S stated: “We do not and never have condoned discrimination or hate speech in any form. At Simon & Schuster, we have always published books by a wide range of authors with greatly varying, and frequently controversial, opinions, and appealing to many different audiences of readers.”
The publisher added: “While we are cognizant that many may disagree vehemently with the books we publish, we note that the opinions therein belong to our authors, and do not reflect either a corporate viewpoint or the views of our employees, and request that readers withhold judgment until they have had a chance to read the actual contents of the book.”
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Poetry Resolutions for 2017! | WritersDigest.com
I don’t know how your poeming went in 2017, but mine was sort of up and down. On one hand, I wrote several drafts that I’m super excited about. On the other hand, my poetry submissions have been so lax that even a rejection would be a welcome sight about now. That said, here’s a post of my poetry resolutions for 2017!
Write a poem each week
This might be my easiest goal, because I’ve been doing it for years with the Wednesday Poetry Prompts and poem-a-day challenges in April in November. In fact, I hope to write a few poems (first drafts) each week in 2017.
Host the April and November poem challenges
This will be my 10th year of running the April and November poem-a-day challenges. Totally excited to keep prompting and poeming!
Make 5 poetry submissions each month
If I accomplish this task, I’ll be super happy, whether I’m receiving acceptances or rejections. In all of 2016, I only made 7 submissions. It’s hard to get published when I’m not sending out my work.
*****
The 2017 Poet’s Market, edited by Robert Lee Brewer, includes hundreds of poetry markets, including listings for poetry publications, publishers, contests, and more! With names, contact information, and submission tips, poets can find the right markets for their poetry and achieve more publication success than ever before.
In addition to the listings, there are articles on the craft, business, and promotion of poetry–so that poets can learn the ins and outs of writing poetry and seeking publication. Plus, it includes a one-year subscription to the poetry-related information on WritersMarket.com. All in all, it’s the best resource for poets looking to secure publication.
*****
Read a new poet’s work each week
One place I totally excelled in 2016 was in reading the work of other poets. I subscribed to multiple poetry publications, bought collections by poets I’d never read before, and snooped around online. The result? A lot of great ideas, wonderful voices, and new ways of looking at the world.
Make the best edition of Poet’s Market ever
Every year, this is my goal. And if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So I’m looking forward to making my 9th edition as editor the best one yet.
Finish my second full-length collection
I think this was a goal last year too, but didn’t happen. But I’m close, so 2017 it is!
So these are my goals. What are yours?
*****
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). Follow him on Twitter @RobertLeeBrewer.
*****
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LitHub Daily: December 30, 2016
The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
TODAY: In 1946, poet and singer-songwriter Patti Smith is born.
The countdown is over: the five biggest literary stories of 2016
Ann Patchett, Colson Whitehead, Lauren Groff… We asked some of our favorite contemporary writers to tell us what the most important books of the last 20 years have been.
Remembering the literary greats we lost in 2016.
The best book-to-screen adaptations in 2016 (and what we want to see adapted in 2017)
“People often say they feel like they know me, but I know they don’t—they’re just responding to an effect created by artifice.” An interview with Maggie Nelson. | The Creative Independent
“Zama takes up directly the matter of Argentine tradition and the Argentine character: what they are, what they should be.” J.M. Coetzee on Antonio Di Benedetto’s novel. | The New York Review of Books
17 books to look forward to next year, from Han Kang’s second book to be translated into English to Colm Toibin’s retelling of the Greek legend of Clytemnestra. | The New York Times
Publishing can’t keep living off the fumes of the boy wizard: Why publishing needs a blockbuster book in 2017. | The Los Angeles Times
“White readers with racial curiosities and quandaries should not assume that all black writers will handhold them:” On the expectations white readers place on black writers. | New Republic
What would it look like if the young protagonists of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with all their loyalty, feuding, and violence, grew up in Brooklyn in the 1980s? On Ron Wimberly’s graphic novel Prince of Cats. | Hyperallergic
Threshold Editions has offered alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos a $250,000 book deal. | Hollywood Reporter
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Threshold to Publish Yiannopoulos’s DANGEROUS in March
Threshold Editions confirmed an earlier report from The Hollywood Reporter that they will publish Breitbart News editor and Twitter troll (now permanently banned from the service) Milo Yiannopoulous’s DANGEROUS on March 14, 2017. The publisher said in the announcement: “DANGEROUS will be a book on free speech by the outspoken…
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Words Matter. We Must Protect Them
A few weeks ago, our country elected as president a man whose campaign rhetoric and actions evinced unprecedented hostility toward press freedoms and free expression in the United States. Out on the campaign trail, president-elect Donald Trump verbally attacked the mainstream media, blacklisted reputable media organizations, insulted individual journalists based on race, gender, and disability, and threatened to expand U.S. libel laws.
Trump also proposed policies that would underscore divisions within our society along lines of ethnicity, race, and religion and further marginalize the voices of immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and the LGBTQ community, among others. Trump has also demonstrated a persistent indifference to the culture of vitriol, hatred, and abuse that some of his most ardent backers have cultivated online. Repeated pleas for Trump to disavow trolling, anti-Semitism, racism, and misogyny were consistently ignored and denied.
Over the past week many have questioned to what degree Trump’s presidency will hew to the declarations of his campaign. Many commentators have ruminated that his rhetoric on the stump was deliberately hyperbolic or even fanciful, calculated only to win an election. Working on behalf of an organization of writers, I cannot be so quick to dismiss Trump’s campaign fulminations as empty words. If we believe that Trump was willing to say just about anything to be elected, what would stop him now from offering equally empty correctives?
Moreover, even if these words had meaning only in the form of campaign threats and promises, they have already had consequences. They have fueled a climate of surging public distrust of the media and sparked fear among individuals who worry that they are no longer safe in America. They have undercut the power of U.S. constitutional values in the eyes of a world that has now witnessed these principles being openly denigrated by a presidential candidate. Words do matter, and Trump’s approach on the stump could have grave and dangerous consequences if it carries over to the bully pulpit of the U.S. presidency.
For PEN America, with a mission that encompasses safeguarding free expression, amplifying less-heard voices, and fostering dialogue that bridges divisions, many of Trump’s campaign messages came across as menacing. Ahead of the political party conventions in July, we sent an open letter—signed by more than 20,000 people—to both Trump and Hillary Clinton, articulating our concerns and asking them both to respect and protect the role of the press.
Trump’s early actions during the transition have not been comforting. He broke with long-standing precedent in refusing to allow a press corps to accompany him to his first meeting with President Obama. Possible cabinet appointees, as secretary of state, include former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been quoted as saying,:“Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”
For those who share PEN America’s commitment to free expression, we hope that you will join us in a rolling series of powerful statements and actions in the coming weeks aimed at safeguarding the freedoms that make great writing possible. Sign up for our daily alert on rights and expression. Watch for petitions and tool kits that will help arm you to defend free speech. Join us as we stand with artists and writers who speak their minds despite fear of reprisal. Share and forward our efforts to prevent marginalized voices from being silenced.
At PEN America’s annual gala in May, author J.K. Rowling railed against some in the government of the United Kingdom who had called for Trump to be banned from entering that country. Trump’s “freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot,” Rowling explained. “His freedom guarantees mine.” Trump has used his freedom to speak to become the president of the U.S. It’s high time we used ours.
Suzanne Nossel is the executive director of PEN America.
A version of this article appeared in the 11/28/2016 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Words Matter
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December 29, 2016
GIVEAWAY: Win From Skedaddle to Selfie by Allan Metcalf
Sponsor and its agents or Administrators are not responsible for lost, late, misdirected, unintelligible, illegible, postage due, stolen, returned, or undelivered, entries, mail or e-mail, or for lost, interrupted or unavailable network, server, Internet Service Provider (ISP), Web site, or other connections availability, accessibility or traffic congestion, miscommunications, failed computer, network, telephone, satellite or cable hardware or software or lines, or technical failure, jumbled, scrambled, delayed, or misdirected transmissions, computer hardware or software malfunctions, failures or difficulties, or other errors of any kind whether human, mechanical, electronic or network. Persons who tamper with or abuse any aspect of the sweepstakes, or Web site, or Web site’s terms of service, as solely determined by the Sponsor, will be disqualified. Sponsor is not responsible for any incorrect or inaccurate information whether caused by Web site users, tampering, or by any of the programming or equipment associated with or used in this sweepstakes, and assumes no responsibility for any errors, omission, deletion, interruption or delay in operation or transmission or communication line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized Web site access. Sponsor not responsible for injury or damage to participants or any other persons, computer or property related to or resulting from participating in this sweepstakes. Should any portion of the sweepstakes be, in Sponsor’s sole opinion, compromised by virus, worms, bugs, non-authorized human intervention or other causes which, in the sole opinion of the Sponsor, corrupt or impair the administration, security, fairness or proper play of this sweepstakes, or submission of entries, Sponsor reserves the right at its sole discretion to suspend or terminate the sweepstakes, and randomly select winners from valid entries received prior to action taken. In the event of a dispute regarding entries received from multiple users having the same e-mail account, the authorized subscriber of the e-mail account used to enter will be deemed to be the entrant, the winner, and must comply with these rules. Authorized account subscriber is the natural person who is assigned the e-mail address by the Internet Service Provider (ISP), on-line service provider, or other organization responsible for assigning e-mail addresses.
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Books Get Christmas Week Bounce
It looks like consumers did a lot of last-minute Christmas shopping, at least for books. After sales of print books were down almost 6% between Thanksgiving week and the week ended December 18, 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, units jumped 21% in the week leading up to Christmas, according to figures from Nielsen BookScan.
The biggest gains in the most recent week came in the juvenile fiction and adult nonfiction segments, which had increases of 25% and 24%, respectively, over the week ended Dec. 27, 2015. The top-selling title in the juvenile fiction category was Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down, which sold just under 131,000 copies. Four books by J.K. Rowling were among the six top bestsellers in the category, with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them #2 on the category bestsellers list, selling almost 125,000 copies. Altogether, the four Rowling books sold over 300,000 copies in the week.
Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard and The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines were one and two on the adult nonfiction category bestsellers, selling 129,000 copies and more than 96,000 copies, respectively. Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run jumped up to #3 on the category bestsellers list, selling over 72,000 copies.
With the boost provided by the final week before Christmas, print unit sales for the holiday season were up 1.3% over the comparable period a year ago. With one more week to go in the year, unit sales of print books rose about 3% over the same period in 2015.
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Behind the Scenes of Platforms of Yore: Not Every Cat Wants to Be The Cat in the Hat
Every issue of WD, we feature one of our favorite late great authors in a column called Platforms of Yore, where we imagine what their modern-day social media pages might look like. For the latest PoY column in our February issue, we featured Dr. Seuss. (Don’t have the issue yet? Get it here). Naturally, that meant in this particular column there had to be some reference to The Cat in the Hat—and naturally, that meant 1) it was the perfect time for my cat to make her literary debut somehow, and 2) we had to find a hat for my cat. (Right!? Cat People, you know this logic totally stacks up.) The result is the meme seen below (or featured in its full glory in the magazine on Page 72).
Meet Teaberry Louise.
What you don’t see above is that we tried to do this authentically, without Photoshop. But we found out that despite what Dr. Seuss or Petsmart or the Internet tells you, cats don’t love hats. They actually really really really don’t love them. And no matter how great your cat is or how wonderful your cat photographer—and in this case both are top-notch—putting a cat in a hat is a rather elusive endeavor. Luckily for our readers, though, we got the whole (attempted) process on camera.
First attempt.
Three seconds later.
And again.
Yeah…no.
We had to take a play break with our trusty Millennium Falcon. [Insert reference to the Force/Carrie Fisher tribute]
She hates me.
From there, it was pretty much a blur.
Hats aside, Teaberry Louise is pretty chill. She’s also making an appearance in a book trailer for Treat Ideas Like Cats very soon, so if you’ve got literary need of a multi-talented tabby, holler at me on Twitter.
Baihley Grandison is the assistant editor of Writer’s Digest and a freelance writer. Follow her on Twitter @baihleyg, where she mostly tweets about writing (Team Oxford Comma!), food (HUMMUS FOR PRESIDENT, PEOPLE), and Random Conversations With Her Mother.
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LitHub Daily: December 29, 2016
The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day
TODAY: In 1904, novelist, playwright, and critic Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa (Kuvempu) is born.
Lenny Letter’s second poetry issue features work by Natalie Diaz, Aziza Barnes, and more. | Lenny Letter
Matthew Salesses curates 12 great books by immigrant writers “in a year where an anti-immigration candidate rode a virulently xenophobic campaign to the White House.” | VICE
“There’s an allegory here about the consequences of believing the weasel words of a criminal (alleged), but the greater issue is how Quixote so tragically misread the situation in the first place.” On Don Quixote and the election. | Los Angeles Review of Books
The damage done to the Hong Kong publishing industry is unprecedented: On the aftermath of Xi Jinping’s crackdown on free speech. | The Guardian
“But here’s the thing. Maybe it’s time to get uncomfortable and upset. Maybe those feelings can be acted upon.” An interview with Emily Raboteau. | The Rumpus
“It is a fable that appeals to our love of social advancement, a new life, fresh experience.” On (finally) rereading Charles Dickens. |The New Yorker
David Galef and Len Kuntz on the state of flash fiction, “the very shortest fiction that still tells a complete story while also packing a wallop.” | Electric Literature
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