“After I finished [The Age of Shiva], I showed it to people, and my god. They had these opinions. If I’d had that kind of advice while writing the book, it would have completely derailed me. That’s something for writers to be cautious about: getting well-meaning advice. You’ve got to have seven or eight people, but even that’s way too much. So I’m very suspicious about advice. I used to be in several writing groups. It was very helpful with short stories. But then I started The Death of Vishnu, and I remember someone really ripping into the first chapter, saying, you know, rearrange it, take apart everything, and then explain where you are, why you’re there, and do all this explanation. I didn’t follow any of it, as it turned out.” —Manil Suri, interviewed in Baltimore City Paper
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The Giving Kind
Huffington Post has launched a database that allows you to track campaign donations by zip code, name, employer, occupation, and more. Nick Antosca is tracking what you get when you search on “novelist” and “author” (via). (The comments are mainly focused on who gave how much to whom, but would-be literary stalkers could also use it to swing by the houses of your favorite writers.)
Crossing the Pond
Victoria Best, a lecturer in French literature at Cambridge who runs a lively blog called Tales From the Reading Room, was nice enough to deem me interesting enough to interview about the intersection of journalism and blogging. It’s long, and I’m under no delusion that it’s stuffed with genius insights. But she asked some great questions that touched on a lot of my concerns about where journalism in general, and arts journalism in particular, is going. Please give it a look.
markathitakis.com 