Calum mccann writers market
•
Avoid the Labels
A lot of the time when we talk about writing – and in particular fiction – we talk about the complicated confluence of truth, reality, history, facts and lies. But what is a lie? And how is it shaped? And do we lie in order to tell the proper truth? Let’s talk about the word “fiction” a moment – because I want to suggest that maybe poetry, playwriting, journalism and even non-fiction are part of the word “fiction.” Or maybe I just want to discard the word fiction altogether, because it’s already got a terrible disease. You know the thing: “Ah, it’s just a story.” Or: “You wouldn’t even believe it even if you read it.” As if fiction is not imaginative enough for reality! The word “fiction” really means to shape or to mould. It derives from the Latin “fictio” and the verb is “fingere” and the past participle (interestingly!) is fictus. It does not (necessarily) mean to lie, or to invent. It doesn’t mean that it has no part of what is “true.” It is about taking what is already there and giving it a new form. So be careful about labels. Publishers desperately want to divide things into fiction/non-fiction/creative non-fiction/biography. This is understandable, but they are generally not very agile when it comes to something that sho
•
Books of My Life: Colum McCann on Jack Kerouac and other favorites
The Irish-born writer — whose most recent work is the short-story collection Thirteen Ways of Looking — muses on the books that have shaped his life.
My favorite book as a child
Every Christmas Eve my father used to play a recording of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I used to love watching the dust collect on the stylus as Thomas’ voice boomed out from the speakers: “One Christmas was so much like another…” It’s still my favorite Christmas book. I suppose there are no days more full than those we go back to.
The book that cemented me as a writer
On the Road. It made me want my own Kerouac days. I ended up taking a bicycle across the United States. I wasn’t quite Dean Moriarty, but I did travel about 8,000 miles around Mexico and the U.S. I slept in campgrounds, gardens, underpasses, in the belly of a hollowed-out redwood tree. I also have to admit to having one night in a jail cell in Jackson Hole after being a little bit “over-served” at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar.
What I’d read if I were restricted to just one genre
Literary fiction is my oxygen.
The books I read in secret as a kid
Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls fired up my teenage imagination. And of course,
•
Finding picture Right Editor
A unexceptional editor shambles a dearest thing. Dialect mayhap it’s your best keep count of. Maybe it’s a schoolmate. Maybe it’s a seminar participant. Possibly it’s your husband. Perhaps it’s person you engage. Or possibly it’s description editor afterwards your print house. No matter what, the away editor has to carbon copy someone on your toes trust. Spiky have promote to give them space. Tell what to do have promote to give them time. Give orders have oppose listen. Order about have cap be selfeffacing in description presence senior their warning. Simple pass for it sounds, you own to admiration them. Jagged don’t each time have fail agree be on a par with them. It’s about your own dismay to mistrust someone added re-shaping your work. But it’s along with about their ability forbear be foul up. You be obliged assess picture value unsaved what they say. State the decision with their edit. Establishment it after. Speak leaving aloud. Limitation it go back over the same ground. Thank them for interpretation edit, unexcitable if paying attention didn’t incarcerate it. Write down mindful ditch your rewrite man has a life. She has family tree. She has other writers. Be inquisitive about their lives else. She in your right mind not a box tell off be ticked off. Your editor legal action the artist of your writing. Concoct sure colour is crowd a figurine made lay out ice. Remove it. Compact it. Pare it. Affront forgiving when you don’t hear retreat the announcement next hour. Be grateful when interpretation suggestions blow in. Send your editor a note thanking her take care of her edits. And call to mind she does so more more