A Veblenesque Gorge

Biggest Announcement of My Whole Life: I’m Writing a Book!

It is with so much happiness (and a healthy amount of stress, now that the reality of a manuscript deadline is part of my life) that I announce that I have sold my book, Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, to Amazon Publishing.

And because this is Amazon Publishing, the recently launched publishing arm of Amazon, there will be some experimentation — namely, the book will be released first in serialization. You buy it, a new chapter automatically pops up on your Kindle/Tablet every week or two. The hold-in-your-hand, made-of-paper version will be released Summer 2014, and I am basically breathing into a paper bag right now.

S. Jam Fitzgerald was the first person I told the idea to, and he liked it. Thus emboldened, I continued batting it around for a few months, then pitched it to the woman who would become my agent, Brandi Bowles, who proceeded to do all the necessary publishing business things with it that are completely foreign to me, including guiding me through the writing of a book proposal.

Since this is a book about the process of writing, it’s only natural that readers of this Tumblr will be subjected to my own writing process as I scramble to get the thing done. I’m going meta like that. More to come soon. I’m so excited. 

I Made a Real Homepage

I decided recently that I was long overdue for a more professional website, where editors and fans (?) can learn about me and see all my published writing in one place.

The result: Sarah Stodola’s Writer Page.

It’s a work in progress, but I hope everyone finds it charming and useful nonetheless.

Why is it I must feel embarrassed about the one profession by which I would want to be known

I really love author Christine Schutt’s response to the question of what she likes least about being a writer. To paraphrase: It sucks telling people you’re a writer.

People ask if you’re a writer, and you say yes. Discomfort ensues. And then:

Would I know your name is the last question, and what is there to say but probably not?

This coming from a woman who has been nominated for the National Book Award

March Writing Group: The One I Almost Sabotaged

I love my writing group, so it was with panicky horror that I received a text from Sacha at 7:30pm or so the night of our March get-together asking where the hell was I, only politely, which is the only way Sacha knows. I responded that I’d be there at 8pm, right? She said, it started at seven. I said oh shiiiiiiizzzzzzz, and then I still got there at five minutes after eight.

I think the delay served everyone well though. Just look at these stories (along with the photos that inspired them)…

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Nothing on the internet is really all that important. That article about “Girls” will probably be there tomorrow and the next day. The internet is forever! And Lena Dunham didn’t get to where she is today by reading dumb shit on the internet and making dumb jokes on Twitter. She makes dumb jokes on HBO. And now people care about her dumb jokes on Twitter. What the hell are you doing with your life, changing your Facebook photo to a red equal sign? C’mon. Stop wasting time. You could die tomorrow, but most likely you will die unfulfilled when you’re really old. And your grandkid will say, “‘Great, Grandma, Where Did You Stand On ‘Leaning In’?” And you will just have a stroke.

Good god this is hilarious: Jim Behrle’s “What Writing Programs Ought To Teach You when They Teach You about Writing,” on the Awl.

Having a Child Has Definitely Not Been a Life-Altering Experience

This whole interview on The Hairpin with Jonny Diamond, who just left his position as editor of the L Magazine and Brooklyn Magazine and has a great name, made me feel a lot, with its missives about quitting a job that is sort of in the ballpark of what you want to be doing, but due to that proximity actually reveals itself to be so far away from what you really want to be doing.

I liked the whole thing, but I especially appreciated this answer, for its honesty and hope that it offers me that people do not actually undergo partial lobotomies while in the hospital awaiting the birth of their first child, like I’ve been starting to assume these past few years:

Wait, no — how have you changed, grown, perfected yourself?

I started playing a lot of hockey this winter, which I have loved very much. And I have a two-year-old son, who seems like a nice guy. But having a child has definitely not been a life-altering experience. I love the kid, and he loves me. I sleep less, and care about all the same things I cared about before he was born, some a little bit more, some less.

Sylvia Smith and Making the Prosaic Interesting

Sylvia Smith was not a writer I’d ever heard of when the New York Times published her obituary earlier this month, but the brief description of her career in the headline – “Writer of the Life Banal” – compelled me to first read the obituary and later to purchase the only book of hers that seems to be currently in print, Appleby House.

Writing about the “life banal” has always struck me as the most difficult kind of life to write about successfully. Anyone who can string a sentence together can write about an alien invasion or the life of Madonna and make it interesting, because the interesting bit is already there for the taking. Terrible writers create bestselling books all the time, simply by thinking up a grisly crime that needs solving, preferably by a smokin’ hot but romantically damaged detective, or by remembering how they overcame one of life’s big events, like addiction or the death of a loved one.

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I Am Writing This Blog Post for Free

I’m sure by now every freelance writer in America has read the post by Nate Thayer documenting his exchange with an editor at The Atlantic, who asked him to write 1,200 words for free. It looked completely familiar to me. Examples: I’ve let the Huffington Post, against every fiber of my being, reprint materials for free that I’ve written for other publications; The New York Times asked me to blog about the 2010 Winter Olympics for free (I’m a former competitive figure skater, so came not only with the writing chops, but also expert knowledge of that event’s most popular sport). I can say that the HuffPo editors are shameless on this front. The New York Times editor was not, and I appreciated it, even though I declined the “work.”

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January Writing Group: Cold Outside, Warm in Our Hearts

There aren’t many things that can entice me out of the apartment on January evenings, but my writing group is one of them. This time around, Ebeth did her first turn as host, and as usual we drank lots of wine and wrote lots of words.

I’ve scanned in the photos upon which each story is based, with the exception of Sacha’s, because someone in my household threw it out by accident when we were cleaning up for guests. It’s obviously gone, unable to survive in isolation from the other three photos. But in a classic twist on the domestic drama, S. Jam Fitzgerald insists that it’s probably still in the apartment somewhere, because he’s not a thrower outer, he’s a stacker.

The mystery is deep. Will it tear this family apart? Spoiler alert: No, but it will result in my being provided with a tray for my stray papers so I no longer lose track of them.

Sacha’s picture was of a bucolic country castle. Sorry Sacha!

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