Sunday, January 06, 2013

First Weekend Roundup Of 2013

I haven't been able to do a weekend roundup of Internet reading for a couple of weeks because those long holiday  weekends we've been experiencing didn't leave me with more time to myself, but less. So I have a lot of things I'm interested in piling up. In no particular order:

'Sick-lit' Books Aimed At Children. A Facebook friend brought this to my attention today. I'm loving the term "sick-lit," but don't think the "genre," if it is a genre, is anything new. Lurlene McDaniel ("Everyone loves a good cry, and no one delivers heartwrenching stories better than Lurlene McDaniel.") has been writing the One Last Wish series for a long time. Is she the mother of sick-lit? Or does the terminal child go back to the nineteenth century? Someone on Facebook mentioned Beth March, as an example. What about Jane Eyre's friend at the beginning of Jane Eyre? Not a YA book, but a dying child.

John Ostrander: Freelancers Live Without a Net at ComicMix. This is true of many "creatives" working for themselves.

Three R's of Narrative Nonfiction in The New York Times. Note that this essay is written by Lee Gutkind, a significant name in creative nonfiction. The link came from Educating Alice.

How to Give a Great Presentation: Timless Advice from a Legendary Adman, 1981 at Brain Pickings. A lot of what's in the first section, "How to Organize a Presentation," also relates to writing essays. Note that Item 3 in the second section instructs us to write out a speech. None of that business of using note cards to remind you of what you were hoping you'd remember to say in the order you hoped you would say it. I received similar advice years ago at a story telling workshop. It helped me a great deal with my presentations, but--surprise--writing out a speech/presentation and practicing it is very labor intensive and time consuming.

Top 10 Storyboard posts of 2012 at Nieman Storyboard. This seems like a good intro to the Nieman Storyboard, which is connected to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and deals with narrative journalism. I was particularly interested in 10 and 3 and hope to spend some time dwelling on them during Retreat Week, which is coming up rapidly.

Tommy Greenwald on Plot Development. It seems to me as if he's using story and plot interchangeably, something many people do. I think there's a distinction, but I haven't had time to work it all out.

The trailer for 1, 2, 3 by the Sea by Dianne Moritz with illustrations by Hazel Mitchell  is so entertaining, I can imagine watching it with a child.

You'd think it would be pretty easy to determine whether or not a book is an author's debut, wouldn't you? Not for the Morris Award.  Check out But What Do The Rules Say?  at Tea Cozy and What is a Debut Novel? at Stacked.

No weekend roundup next weekend because, as I mentioned above, I will be retreating.


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