Sticky Notes Blog

A blog of writing news, tips, and inspiration from Fat Plum

Pittsburgh Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival

Fat Plum recently attended the first-ever Pittsburgh Creative Nonfiction Literary Festival, organized by CREATIVE NONFICTION, the journal devoted exclusively to the creative nonfiction genre. We had a table in the Media Fair, which gave us not only the opportunity to premier several Fat Plum products (look for them soon on our website) but also to talk to a lot of writers and editors. In addition, FP's Cindy Closkey spoke on a panel about online publishing, wearing her editor's hat for Inkburns literary journal. A great weekend all the way around and our thanks to Creative Nonfiction for organizing it. It's good for the soul to connect with a community of writers. We'll be posting our top take-aways over the next few days (as we recover!).

Posted by Julie on November 20, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Literary genres

Editors on mid-list marketing

An informative, informal survey of three New York editors. It's on BookAngst, an anonymous, publishing-focused weblog that appears to be well-informed and revealing.

Here's what the survey is about:

I'm extremely pleased to be able to share the completely unexpurgated replies to a series of questions from three of New York's top editors. I asked them to target their comments to what, for lack of a more precise term, we'll call a mid-list-ish title--that is, a book with a first printing in the 7500 - 15,000 copy range.

Questions include "what can a writer do personally to increase his/her visibility--both in-house and out--before the book is published?" and "does marketing drive sales, or do sales drive marketing?" Great reading for new and experienced writers.

(Thanks to The Elegant Variation for the pointer to the survey.)

Posted by Cindy on November 08, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Marketing and promotion

50 thousand words in 30 days

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. It happens ever year, and it's a terrific event. From the website:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Can it be done? Yes. I've "won" (that is, finished) NaNoWriMo twice, and both times I was very proud of the result. My mother completed it twice too, creating a full draft of a novel each time, while still working and preparing all the family's Thanksgiving activities.

So get out your pens, typewriters, laptops, Alphasmarts... whatever you need, and get going!

Posted by Cindy on November 01, 2004
This entry was posted in the following categories: Recommended