New Yorker Festival 2008 lineup announced

The New Yorker Festival has announced their 2008 lineup of events, and there are a lot of great ones. These ones have me drooling specifically:

Saturday, October 4th

Writers and Their Subjects: Clint Eastwood and Lillian Ross
1 p.m. Directors Guild of America ($25)

Lynda Barry in conversation with Matt Groening
4 p.m. Festival HQ
Metropolitan Pavilion ($25)

Worst Nightmares Part 1: Horror Movies
With Wes Craven and Hideo Nakata. Moderated by Ben Greenman.
7:30 p.m. IFC Center ($35)

The full lineup is pretty amazing. The events are all a bit pricey and will sell out fast, but definitely worth trying for if you see something you're really digging. Tickets go on sale Friday, September 12th.

Got any unused, unsold manuscripts?

Maybe they can work as an eBook?

About a year ago, there was an item on GalleyCat about authors turning old, unsold manuscripts into free ebooks, with Melanie Lynne Hauser's Jumble Pie cited as a prime example. Hauser emailed yesterday to say that the novel's trackable readership had just passed the 1,300 mark—and, thanks to what she describes as a "lucky accident," more than 60 percent of those readers came this summer. (Not known: How many of those 1,300 downloaders passed the file around to their friends?)

[via GalleyCat]

What are you reading?

I'm stealing an idea from Connie at The Miami Herald and asking a question via the InterGoogle that I often ask people in person: What are you reading now? And, more importantly, how is it?

I'm still tearing through Michael Connelly's library. I'm on my ninth book of his (which, I realized last night, I've read in little over a month), eight of which have been installments in the Harry Bosch detective series. The one I'm reading now, though, Chasing the Dime, isn't part of the series. It tells the story of chemist Henry Pierce, who discovers that his new phone number used to belong to someone else. That someone else being a high-priced escort named Lilly who has gone missing. Things get weirder from there, and Henry finds himself immersed in the seedy world of prostitution and Internet adult entertainment.

At first, I was a little annoyed at the book. See, it was the third book in a three-book omnibus I'd bought. Two of the books were Bosch novels, so I was really looking forward to continuing the adventures of Harry. So, I was a little irked to find this standalone story grouped with two from the series. But, after muddling through the first few chapter, I realized that not only was this a decent mystery in its own right (and also featured a number of previously seen characters from the Bosch series), but also had a few hints and tips on how I could better execute my own crime novel, which has some parallels to Dime, most visibly the notion of the non-detective becoming the hero/detective against his better judgement and out of a desire to help a friend/person in need.

In that respect, Chasing the Dime has been a helpful guide toward getting a sense of how I could make my book work, and how I could make it different and potentially avoid some of the story mistakes my radar picked up while reading the novel. I wouldn't say it's as entertaining as the Bosch books, but that's fine. That can be chalked up to familiarity with the character and the comfort zone that creates. Still, I'd consider reading another Henry Pierce novel. Assuming he doesn't end up dead -- I still have a few more chapters to go.

Sarah Palin: A novelist's view

The L.A. Times book blog, JACKET COPY considers VP candidate Sarah Palin as a character. Worth reading:

As a novelist, I am fascinated by the emergence of Sarah Palin as a character. This lively cross between Annie Oakley and Eva Braun seems to have released Republican chakras to a degree that could be matched only by the resurrection of Ronald Reagan. This is more extraordinary by virtue of her having been an unknown local politician until — what? oh, about five minutes ago. As the nation slouches toward her possible elevation to the second-highest office in the land, we're all taking a closer look at what's gone on in Alaska these past few years.

There's the aerial wolf hunting, the moose burgers, the book banning — excuse me? The book banning? As Jacket Copy reported earlier this week, Palin leaned on the local librarian when she was mayor of Wasilla, urging her to ban certain texts. In other words, we are in danger of going from a nation where the first lady is a former librarian to one where the vice president is a character in "Fahrenheit 451." Clearly, this is what they mean by change you can believe in.

LOST writer Brian K. Vaughan's advice to new writers

I mentioned this in the comments to Suckerman's post about Heinlein...

Brian K. Vaughan (Lost, Y the Last Man) wrote a nice piece on establishing yourself as a writer. The piece isn't very long, but here's my favorite bit:

WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS.

That's it. Everything else is meaningless. You can take all the classes in the world and read every book on the craft out there, but at the end of the day, writing is sorta like dieting. There are plenty of stupid fads out there and charlatans promising quick fixes, but if you want to lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. Period. Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.

I've always admired Vaughan's writing, and not just because he has a very similar background to many of the members here in the Screenwriters League.

On an unrelated note, the AVClub has a great breakdown of movies the turn their audience into voyeurs. Definitely a good read.

The Writing Week part 36

This week’s subject: Query Letters.

They’ve been on my mind a lot recently. With a draft of my post-Apocalyptic spec that I’m very pleased with to the point of being ready to show it to industry people, I’ve been thinking about what the next step is. In truth, there seem to be few answers; there aren’t a ton of contests right now, and even if there were, I don’t really feel like spending $50 on something that is as great a bet as query letters are; I don’t have many contacts that would allow me to bypass the query letter phase; and as unsure a bet as they are, query letters are quite common and – theoretically – painless.

I know that there are many different schools of thought on how much a writer should read about the business and craft. Personally, I haven’t read many screenwriting books. I read bits and pieces of a few while in school, but after a while they stopped being useful. It was the same experience for me this past week when I perused the internet for query letter advice.

Some sources had very strict rules. Others were general. Some advised to try and incorporate a bit of humor or interesting personal information. Others suggested getting right down to business. By the time I was done reading, I’d put together a sense of a general query letter – something I’d already known – with more “don’t dos” than “dos.” The inconsistent advice (one site’s “don’t” referenced another’s “do” example) just reinforced an opinion I have on reading screenwriting books – read everything, and you’ll be more confused than when you started.

I’ve known people who read every book that comes out on how to write a screenplay, and, with few exceptions, they’ve been the ones whose work has most often needed improvements. I’m not saying that reading how-to information, be it on writing scripts or query letters, is useless – it can be of great help. But an oversaturation of information, all of which comes from different people with different opinions, can lead to confusion or frustration.

After reading site after site on how to craft the best query letter – all of which said that chances of getting a response are hardly even 10 out of 100 – I decided to just go ahead. This week’s goal is to send out a query letter to at least a dozen companies. I wrote the letter last week. I’m happy with it. It’s no different than most of the “correct” examples I found. Since queries and e-queries are such a gamble anyway, what real reason do I have not to?

Literary agent opens up blog to authors to share their experience

Pretty interesting post, from MediaBistro's GalleyCat book blog:

Earlier this year, GalleyCat explained how science-fiction author John Scalzi was opening up his blog to guest essayists for a series of posts called "The Big Idea." Here's another iteration of that basic concept: Literary agent Jenny Rappaport is devoting a portion of her blog, Lit Soup, to "Book Blocks," which she describes as short pieces in which authors can discuss one of the "building blocks" of their upcoming book: "the characters, the plot, the theme, the actual writing structure, the idea behind the novel (or non-fiction work), the worldbuilding, etc."

Worth keeping an eye on, no matter how creepy that photo is.