Greetings, writers! Thanks for choosing to spend some time with me today, and for listening to WriteByNight consultant (and my personal writing coach) Tom Andes's new album, Those LA Nights, while you do so! (And then after you've played it a few times put on Tom's Static on Every Station, the title track of which is as catchy as [insert a song you consider absurdly catchy].) In this week's message you'll find: - Exciting news from WBN coach Sara Zarr!
- Exciting news from WBN coach Michael Bible!
- Your turn (and blog post!!!!): Why
read?
- My 10 Favorite Novels Since 2014, vol. 1
This week's video- This month's featured service & promotion
- Yak Babies roundup
- What am I reading? Am I writing?
We've got a lot of ground to cover this week, so let's get to it! Major News Item no. 1: Sara Zarr On March 5, WriteByNight coach and consultant Sara Zarr released her tenth book, Kyra, Just for
Today (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins). Kirkus calls Sara's second middle-grade novel "Authentic and heartbreaking but hopeful" while Booklist labels it "tender." Kyra follows a character first
introduced in Sara's A Song Called Home, which was reissued in paperback also on March 5. About Kyra, Sara says, "I wasn't quite ready to leave the world and people of [A Song Called Home] and picked the story up when
the characters are thirteen. If you remember anything about being thirteen, you know it probably wasn't the best year of your life!" Buy the book from your favorite retailer and then crack it open to see if you catch the whiff of Sara's second National Book Award nomination! Check out this Q&A with Sara on our site. If you're interested in working with her on your own
fiction, drop me a line and let's talk. Congrats, Sara! Major News Item no. 2: Michael Bible Imagine my delight when I opened my March 6 email from Publishers Marketplace and saw the entry below: That's right, folks, WriteByNight's very own Michael Bible has sold another book! To Clash, which is a very cool press in upstate New York; and to Adelphi, an Italian publisher going in for its second Bible novel. "I’ve discovered a whole new world in European publishing," Michael tells us. "There’s a care and respect for literary fiction that doesn’t exist as much in America anymore. It’s an option for writers whose work might have a small audience in the US to find readers." Sounds like a winner -- anything that explores human suffering is right up my alley. While we wait for Little Lazarus, check out some of Michael's other
work. If you want to start with my favorite, pick up a copy of The Ancient Hours. While you're at it, read this Q&A with Michael on
our site. If you're interested in working with Michael on your fiction or screenplay (a film Michael wrote, Dogleg, will stream on MUBI in May!), drop me a line. Congrats, Michael! Biiiiig week for WriteByNight's coaches! (By the way, if you've got any exciting writing-related news of your own, reply to this message to tell me about it!) After taking in
y'all's feedback from the survey, it's clearly time to resurrect WriteByNight's blog. Many of you miss the community you used to find in the discussions below our posts. Others of you asked for more prompts. So this week, I'm going to combine those two ideas and ask a simple question, which I'd love for you to go answer in the comments
of the linked blog post: Why do you read? It
seems like such a simple question. But is it? There's barely a single TV show or movie ever made that you can't watch with just a few clicks; or games you can't play on your phone; or YouTube rabbit holes you can't go down. It sometimes feels like reading a book hardly stands a chance anymore. But you keep at it. Why? Is it for
escapism only? Is it to keep up with what your fellow writers are doing? Is it because you believe those studies that say reading makes us more empathetic? Head on over to our blog post to discuss in the
comments. And I'll see you there! My 10 Favorite Novels Since 2014, vol. 1 Recently I was talking about clickbait lists with WriteByNighter Bonnie C., and it got me thinking about what kind of reading list I might come up with. We see them everywhere, these lists. Some are incredibly pompous: "The 50 Books Everyone Should Read." Go f*** yourself, how about. "The Best 65 Books of the Last Two Weeks." Who are you to decide the *best* books? Just be honest about it. "My 50 Favorite Books" or whatever. That
list, I'll read. My reading has always been 85% or so fiction. So that's where I'll start. If I did an of-all-time thing, I'd be going from 1605 (Don Quixote) to 2023. That's too much ground to cover for something so irrelevant. So what I've landed on is this: Over the next few weeks months years? in this space I'll run down my 10 favorite novels published from 2014 to 2024. Only one rule: No WriteByNight staff or clients, and no friends. 11. Growing Up Dead in Texas, Stephen
Graham Jones; The Yellow House, Sarah Broom OK, I need to start by cheating immediately. Because Growing Up Dead in Texas is from 2012, and The Yellow House is memoir, but I can't imagine making any kind of list without including them. Jones's book is like fictionalized memoir and its layers are a super-fun mindf*ck. It's about a long-ago cotton fire in West Texas, but it's also about so much more. Every time I read it I solve another part of the puzzle, but each of those answers creates a new missing piece. I'll never figure it out entirely. But I *will*
keep trying. Broom's is a memorialization of her family and their eponymous home, the latter of which was ruined by Katrina and later demolished. It's also a deep dive into the racial and socioeconomic injustice so rampant in New Orleans, particularly in Broom's neighborhood of New Orleans East. The fact that I was so riveted so immediately during
an early, and very long, rundown of Broom's family history says it all.
10. Women Talking, Miriam Toews This one is based on a horrifying true story about a Mennonite colony in Bolivia where, over four years, more than 100 women and girls were systematically raped in their sleep after being sprayed with chemical agents by a group of men in the colony. In Toews's imagining, the abused women meet over the course of several days and nights to determine what to do about it: Formally forgive the now-arrested men (and secure entry to heaven) or refuse to forgive them and be excommunicated from the colony, and perhaps hunted down? What we read are the so-called minutes of these meetings,
handwritten by the only man allowed to attend. And naturally, he's got his own story. It's riverting to watch Toews as she so skillfully prevents her characters from presenting as victims only and handles subject matter that could easily turn overwrought. (The film is well-done, too.) Next week we'll take a trip to the corporatocratic future this (already-corporatocratic) nation is headed toward, and then to Argentina. And maybe, space permitting, to Middle America in the midst of the opioid crisis. Fun! 👋 (Move along, nothing to see here) Meet Your New Writing Coach From now until mid-April, enroll in our book coaching or private instruction with coach Jules Vasquez and save $20 per session! If you're struggling through your book or other writing project and need some consistent feedback, encouragement, and accountability, Jules is the one to help you get
unstuck. No contracts and no minimums, which means you're free to come and go as you please. It's your book, so we'll work at your pace. Click the button below
to get started today!
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Yak Babies: Hugos & Farts
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What Am I Reading? Am I Writing? Two Sundays ago I took the
morning off and began Counterfeit by erstwhile WriteByNight coach and ol' pal from grad school Kirstin Chen. I figured I'd read a couple of chapters, get a taste. A bunch of hours later, I was two-thirds through the book and had lost all track of time and space. That's how engaging it is. The next day, I ran into a work-related buzz saw that's still buzzing and I
haven't touched the book since. Not because I haven't wanted to, because I'm dying to know how Kirstin wraps it up. I'll report back next time! The Saturday before that Sunday, I wrote a new opening scene to my novel. I like it, a lot. It's kind of given me a new perspective on a particular object that plays a role through
the rest of the story. Here's a(n unsolicited) taste: The thought of how the costume jewelry will have nobody to go to after I die was at
first enough to make me assign it to the dumpster pile, but my subsequent thought — that of running into my mother in hell and having her harangue me for eternity with her misused ten-dollar words: “The fact that you threw it away is the very epitome of why I didn’t give it to you in the first place” — inspired me to resurrect it.
Soon enough, I'll get back to both of the above! (I think?) What are you writing? What are you reading? Writerly Quote of the Week "Read every day, try to write every day. Those are crucial. I try to write a minute a day. It’s easy to procrastinate writing, just not do it, or not feel like it. But a minute a day is not hard. ... I know it sounds crazy but it works. It reduces the pressure. I always write much
longer." -- Chris Offutt, from this interview Happy writing! David Duhr
Co-founder, WriteByNight
P.S. If you know someone who might benefit from today's message, please feel free to forward this email along. Go on, help a writer out. Resources Find a home for your creative work Carve out writing time from your busy schedule |
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