Biting the Bullet

Posted by on Oct 15, 2006 in dish | 1 comment Well, I’ve gone and done it now. I signed up for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, for those of you not up to date on writerly sorts of things. The task: complete a 50,000 word first draft of a novel by 11:59:59 pm on November 30.Am I crazy? Probably. But as someone who’s always lived on the adrenaline rush of impossible deadlines, perhaps offering myself up to the...
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R.I.P. Chick Lit–for Now

Posted by on Sep 24, 2006 in dish | 0 comments Depressing news comes more often by email and link these days, doesn’t it? According to agent Jenny Bent, Barnes and Noble’s head buyer has declared chick lit officially dead.Boo hoo for me. I guess Crash Test won’t be seeing the light of day anytime soon. But I kind of figured that out already. So am I giving up? Hell, no. And if Ms. Bent is to be believed, the hallmark of...
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S-p-e-l-l-i-n-g Counts!

Posted by on Sep 19, 2006 in dish | 0 comments Call me a cranky English teacher if you must, but I’m a bit perturbed at this: I’m all for Fergie making a name for herself in a way that has nothing to do with her abs or her former crystal meth addiction, but what boneheaded copyeditor/art director approved this title? DUCHESS IS NOT FREAKIN’ SPELLED WITH A ‘T’!!It’s petty, I know, but this kind of thing is...
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How Kaavya Got Published, Got Caught, and Got a Reputation

Posted by on May 4, 2006 in dish | 0 comments Like many of my writer friends, if the traffic on my e-loops can be believed, I have been obsessing over the continuing saga of Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore who signed a $500 large publishing contract with Little, Brown, made her debut in hardcover, and then was accused of plagiarism. (That’s the Cliff’s Notes version–read the whole icky saga at Wikipedia if...
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Contest Season

Posted by on Feb 28, 2006 in dish | 0 comments I mailed off my GH scores, and as usual, I have mixed feelings. Not about the entries–I’m darned clear about how I feel about them–but about me.The score range on this batch covered more territory than in some years, and I even saw a couple that were in the wrong category. How is it possible to miss that? One actually had the proper category printed on the cover sheet, yet that...
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