Writerly stuff

1. Ned Vizzini has been working for two years on a book that's more than 400 pages long. He finally sent it to his agent. They just had a phone conversation in which the agent gave a lot of criticism and they both decided to put the book off indefinitely.
Surprisingly, he's not upset. He actually is a bit relieved.
This turn of events, and the fact that he has a newer project he's more excited about, is not so unusual in the writing world.
Anyway, here's his journal entry about this, which is interesting and a good slice of the writing life.
It's just too bad I'll have to wait longer to read the next Ned book, because his two novels were great.

2. An article about submtiting your short stories or essays to literary magazines. There's usually low or no pay, but it gets your work out there. And sometimes it even gets your work to a "Best of..." collection, where there IS some financial reward. Plus it may get the attention of agents or editors. Junot Diaz rose to prominence by getting his first story in STORY Magazine when it existed years ago. Agents saw it and ultimately he got a book of short stories published.