NPR Bucks the Trend & Bumps Up Book Coverage

At a time when American newspapers are cutting back on book news and reviews, it's great to hear that National Public Radio is bucking this mainstream-media trend.

Publishers Weekly reports today that the NPR web site is beefing up its literary features and reviews and adding original online content to the site.

"Books are among the top three topics attracting traffic to the NPR site," NPR's senior supervising producer Joe Matazzoni told Publishers Weekly. "Book content really works for our audience."

Where do you get your book news?

The Word, According to Humpty Dumpty

In the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with Humpty Dumpty...

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that’s all."

Alice was too puzzled to say anything; so after a minute, Humpty Dumpty began again.

"They’ve a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs: they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!"

"Would you tell me, please," said Alice, "what that means?"

"Now you talk like a reasonable child," said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. "I meant by 'impenetrability' that we’ve had enough of that subject and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life."

"That’s a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

"When I make a word do a lot of work like that, said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

What's your relationship with words? Do you take charge of them, as Humpty Dumpty did? Or do you trust in their innate wisdom?

It wasn't so much over the words themselves that Humpty Dumpty claimed mastery. It was over rigid definitions. Are you a slave to those definitions? Or are you willing to free yourself to be as creatively playful as was Lewis Carroll?

Whichever, you'll find 50 words and phrases to jump-start your writing on page 40 of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Feeling Rejected? Don't Be Dejected!

Author Madeleine L'Engle received two years' worth of rejections from 26 publishers for her novel A Wrinkle in Time, which, once it was finally published in 1962, went on to win major awards and be translated into more than a dozen languages.

Toward the end of that two-year period, L'Engle covered up her typewriter and decided to give up -- on A Wrinkle in Time and on writing. Then on her way downstairs, a revelation: an idea for a novel about failure. In a flash, she was back at the typewriter.

"That night," as she explained in April 1993 on the PBS documentary Madeleine L'Engle: Stargazer, "I wrote in my journal, 'I'm a writer. That's who I am. That's what I am. That's what I have to do -- even if I'm never, ever published again.' And I had to take seriously the fact that I might never, ever be published again. ... It's easy to say I'm a writer now, but I said it when it was hard to say. And I meant it."

Today, the bibliography on L'Engle's web site lists 62 works spanning the period from 1944 through 2005, plus a 63rd, published posthumously in 2008. Madeleine L'Engle died in September 2007.

"I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write A Wrinkle in Time," her New York Times obituary quotes her as having said. "It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice."

~ Listen to the guided meditation, "You Are A Writer"

Is the Write Idea the Right Idea?

There are many good ideas out there in the ethers -- ideas for books and screenplays, ideas for songs, articles and poems. Your friends will suggest them. Your partner will suggest them. Your logical mind will suggest them.

You'll see something or hear about something and you'll think, "Wouldn't that make a great story?"

Maybe it would. Maybe it's yours to write. Maybe it's not.

There's a difference between a good idea and the right idea, between an idea that is anyone's for the taking and one that is uniquely yours, one that's right for you, right now.

Before you launch into a frenzy of research and writing, ask yourself: Is this what I’m called to write? Is this the call of my Muse, the story only I can tell? Or is this anyone's? Is this another good idea or is this the right idea for me?

Anyone can take a good idea and give it shape and substance. Some can do it better than you, some not as well.

Nobody can take the idea that sings to your soul and perform the kind of alchemy on it that you can. Only you can transform that idea into the one-of-a-kind gem it longs to be. That is why it, through your Muse, called to you...chose you.

Accept that you were chosen. Perform your magic. Let the right idea be the idea you write.

Right now.

~ from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. (c) 2008 Mark David Gerson

Inspired Quote: Living Your Dream

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

~ Beverly Sills

True Stories

"Tell them stories. ... You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well. Just tell them stories."

~ Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

Contests from Writer's Digest

These three writing competitions from Writer's Digest magazine are now accepting entries:

~ 4th Annual Pop Fiction Awards: Entries accepted in Romance, Mystery/Crime Fiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller and Horror. Deadline: Nov. 3, 2008. Details here.

~ 4th Annual Writer's Digest Poetry Awards: Any style, as long as the poem has fewer than 33 lines. Deadline: Dec. 19, 2008. Details here.

~ 9th Annual Writer's Digest Short Short Story Competition: Fiction that's "bold, brilliant...but brief." Deadline: Dec. 1, 2008. Details here.

Meditation Retreat for Writers

What do writers want more than anything in the world? Time to write. Yet even if such precious time could be found, it's not always easy to settle into the writing groove. Meditation can help synchronize mind and body in a way that truly supports the creative process.

For an event that truly supports the creative process, please join my friend and New York Times bestselling author Susan Piver for Meditation and Creativity, a week-long retreat for writers at Vermont's Karmê Chöling Shambhala Meditation Center. The retreat starts June 29 and is open to writers of both fiction and non-fiction, whether published or not.

For more information, click here.

If you can't make it to the retreat -- and even if you can -- please check out The Voice of the Muse Companion, my 2-CD set of guided meditations for writers. You can hear a sample meditation here.

The Music of Revision

Paris Review: What do you look for when you revise?

J.P. Donleavy: What I look for is a kind of inevitability, the words and sentences falling into an inevitable place that relates to what's gone before and that will presage what follows. ... This is the inevitability -- the words on the page, which lie there naturally, which don't you jar you, and find their own naturalness when they're said or read.

I suppose I think of myself as a sort of scientist, working with words, relating what is going on in my consciousness to what I put on the paper. It's like music . . . an orchestration. As in bell-ringing, when you ring, peal the bells, one echoing sound from one word will echo and sound in another. ... I work a long time on the sound-sense of words.

Occasionally I find myself trapped trying to get the rhythms down properly and sometimes something just won't work. There's one spot in The Ginger Man that I've never been able to solve to this day. It isn't perfect. ... In some ways, I was relieved to know, coming back to that passage ten years later and deliberating over it again, that it couldn't be solved even now till this day with what one assumes is one's accumulated masterliness.

~ The complete Paris Review interview.

On the Air with Mark David: Santa Fe Radio Café

Hear Mark David speaking about writing and about his two books on the Santa Fe Radio Café, a Santa Fe public radio interview that first aired June 12 on KSFR.

~ For a schedule of Mark David's upcoming interviews and other events and appearances, please check out the events widget in the sidebar.

~ For audio archives of other interview and links to audio excerpts and reviews/news stories, click here.