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Despite a bestelling novel as its source—and a score that was composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood—the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, directed by Anh Hung Tran, has been met with decidedly mixed reviews that boil down to: The book is better. The movie was released in Japan and Russia last December and in the UK in March.
Will Allison, whose beautifully written debut novel, What You Have Left, was released in 2007, discusses his followup, Long Drive Home, published this month by Free Press.
If somehow you're one of the few who missed Richmond, Virginia, attorney David Kazzie's hilarious Xtranormal animation, "So You Want to Write a Novel," that zinged around the Internet a few months back, then watch it right now, but only if you're sitting somewhere where it's appropriate to laugh out loud. It lampoons the vast, blind ambition of certain novice writers, and tickled agents, editors, writers, as well as would-be writers and readers alike. The video, as they say, went viral, and one of the multitude of people who liked it, was Ann Rittenberg, a Manhattan literary agent who represents Dennis Lehane, and who, with Laura Whitcomb, has written a how-to guide called Your First Novel.
Kazzie noticed Rittenberg had linked to his video, and found it particular exciting as he is a huge Dennis Lehane fan. Kazzie and Rittenberg chatted, and it turned out, Kazzie did indeed have an unpublished manuscript, a thriller. Rittenberg liked his sensibility. David Kazzie now has an agent, and, yes, it's Ann Rittenberg.
Bonus: Ann Rittenberg's "The Successful Writer’s Personality" and an interview with David Kazzie. Also, check out more with Ann Rittenberg in Eryn Loeb's article, "Seek and You Shall Sign" in The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents.
This September Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference will expand its workshop from the historic Bread Loaf Inn in Middlebury, Vermont, to the Italian island of Sicily, with a condensed program of classes in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Ice Cube Press, the nineteen-year-old publisher based in Iowa City with a focus on the importance of place.
In a Paris Review interview, fiction writer Amy Hempel talks about a workshop she took with legendary editor Gordon Lish in which he assigned the class to "write our worst secret, the thing we would never live down, the thing that, as Gordon put it, 'dismantles your own sense of yourself.'" From this came her story, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried." Follow Lish's assignment. Write a story about your worst secret.
In the eleven-minute film In the Spotlight (2007), starring Michelle Tea, Guinevere Turner, and Clint Catalyst, with music by Emily Wells, writer and director Hilary Goldberg presents the story of an aspiring author who is offered the chance to be the front person for a literary hoax and discovers a fate far worse than rejection.
Aspring novelist (and "Insane Lunatic") James Andrew Wilson takes us through the five emotional stages of writing a novel.
Based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett, The Help, starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer, will hit theaters in August.
Eavesdrop on two people having a conversation in a public place. (Avoid small-talk, conversations about the weather.) Write down exactly what they say, including their "ums," "uhs," "likes," and stutters for two pages. Then rewrite that page, using only dialogue, but making it more suited for the literary page; clean it up, keeping the sentiments, but getting rid of all the inconsequential words and lines, and even changing the language to make it more engrossing. (Try to find the subtext behind what they’re saying and what you observed about them while listening.) Compare the original and the revised dialogue. The revision will still be boring, as most people’s conversations are, but the point is to see how fictional dialogue is not the same as spoken dialogue.
This week's fiction prompt comes from fiction writer Teddy Wayne, author of the novel Kapitoil (Harper Perennial, 2010).
