The threat of the internet has forced magazines to get smarter
"PRINT is dead" was a common refrain a couple of years ago. The costly print advertisements that kept magazines and newspapers alive were migrating to the web, where they earned only pennies on the dollar. To publishers, it felt as if a hurricane was flattening their business.
But as the storm has cleared, a new publishing landscape has emerged. What was once a fairly uniform business--identify a group of people united by some shared identity or passion, write stories for them to read and sell advertising next to the stories--has split into several different kinds.
Hard news is perhaps the hardest to make profitable. It is increasingly instant, constant and commoditised (as with oil or rice, consumers do not care where it came from). With rare exceptions, making money in news means publishing either the cheap kind that attracts a very large audience, and making money from ads, or the expensive kind that is critical to a small audience, and making money from subscriptions. Both are cut-throat businesses; in rich countries, many papers are closing.
But among magazines there is a new sense of optimism. In North America, where the recession bit deepest (see chart), more new magazines were launched than closed in 2011 for the second year in a row. The Association of Magazine Media (MPA) reports that magazine audiences are growing faster than those for TV or newspapers, especially among the young.
Unlike newspapers, most magazines didn't have large classified-ad sections to lose to the internet, and their material has a longer shelf-life. Above all, says David Carey, the boss of Hearst Magazines, a big American publisher, they represent aspirations: "they do a very good job of inspiring your dreams." People identify closely with the magazines they read, and advertisers therefore love them: magazines, says Paul-Bernhard Kallen, the chairman of Hubert Burda Media, a large German publisher, remain essential for brand-building.
Which is why luxury magazines are doing particularly well, as are those in emerging markets, where a fast-growing middle class is coming into those advertisers' sights. In Brazil, for example, the Abril Group has made Minha Casa, a home-improvement magazine, the leader of its kind in two years thanks to a careful focus on new homeowners.
Back in the United States, the number of ad pages in magazines has dropped for three quarters in a row, according to the Publishers' Information Bureau. But that is partly cyclical, says Nina Link, the MPA's head, and it doesn't account for the growing number of ads in digital form.
Once, digital ads would have been scant comfort. On the web they are typically worth a small fraction of what they were in print. But tablets, such as Apple's iPad, could change this.
They have been around for only two years and most magazine subscriptions on them for less than a year; the MPA suggested measurement standards for advertising on tablets only in April. Yet already there are signs that advertisers are accepting higher rates on tablets than on the web, because magazines on tablets are more like magazines in print: engrossing, well-designed experiences instead of forests of text and links.
Publishers are still experimenting with formats: some are little different from their print versions, while others are more interactive, perhaps too much so. Hearst's Cosmopolitan launched the digital-only Cosmo for Guys, which purports to shed light on feminine psychology for baffled males; an early issue included 3-D models of sexual positions that you could rotate to view from every possible angle. Who says glossy mags aren't educational?
But the wiser publishers are finding ways to rely less on advertising. They are looking to make more not only from subscriptions but also from other sources. Today, "you need five or six revenue streams to make the business really successful," says Mr Carey. Spurred by necessity and enabled by technology, magazines "innovate in ways they never dreamed of a few years ago," says Ms Link.
What else a magazine can do besides sell copies depends on its audience and subject matter. Many are turning themselves from mere carriers of ads into marketing-services companies, giving their advertisers a range of new ways to reach readers. Travel magazines' websites can track if their readers end up buying the holiday packages they write about, and take a cut. "I count that as advertising," says Mr Kallen. "What many people call advertising…is definitely declining, but advertising in the broader sense isn't."
Other commercial branchings-out include a growing range of conferences or celebrity events, the licensing of magazines' names to products such as cosmetics, and tie-ups with deal and coupon websites such as Groupon. Successful new magazines have been launched on the back of TV programmes, such as Hearst's "Food Network" and "HGTV" (a home-improvement show) and the BBC's "Top Gear" (a show about macho cars). With so many countries now boasting a big middle class, international franchises often work well; Hearst's Cosmopolitan now has 66 different country editions.
There are also more esoteric business models. Monocle, a global magazine for the insufferably stylish, claims that the online radio channel it launched last autumn has been profitable from the start, since normal commercial radio stations never deliver the kinds of listeners its high-end advertisers want. The Atavist, an American iPad magazine that publishes one long piece of narrative journalism each month, says it makes money largely because it licenses its iPad publishing software to other people.
Loyalty is lucrative
The ability of magazines to inspire fierce loyalty among readers means there are also lots of small-time, quirky successes. XXI, a French quarterly of long-form reportage, is profitable despite carrying no ads, not putting its text online and being sold only in bookshops; it seems to capitalise on French intellectual traditions and the concentration in Paris of voracious readers. Germany's Landlust, which extols the virtues of living at a relaxed pace and in close contact with nature, is another print-only holdout, with a circulation of 1m after seven years. As long as there are coffee tables, people will want things to put on them.
Source Citation
"Non-news is good news; The magazine industry." The Economist [US] 9 June 2012: 74(US). Educators Reference Complete. Web. 11 June 2012.
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Monday, June 11, 2012
Non-news is good news; The magazine industry
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Become sodium savvy and reduce your heart risks: most sodium comes fromsources besides table salt, so read food labels carefully and exploremore healthful alternatives
Your doctor told you to cut back on your sodium, so you've put away the salt shaker and the salty snacks. Chances are you're still getting too much sodium each day.
Most of the sodium you consume comes not from the salt you sprinkle on your meals, but from the food itself. While some foods, like potato chips and pretzels, are obvious sodium sources, others may not taste salty but are high in sodium.
"Even milk and cheese are things that most people don't think have sodium in them," says Laura Jeffers, RD, LD, with Cleveland Clinic's Department of Nutrition Therapy.
"So, you have to look at what you're eating and consider the total sodium load in your diet." To reduce your sodium intake, carefully read the labels of the products you buy and choose lower-sodium options. And, as much as possible, opt for fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, and whole grains.
SODIUM IN YOUR DIET
Too much sodium causes fluid retention and contributes to high blood pressure. The American Heart Association and other experts recommend limiting dietary sodium consumption to 2,300 mg (about one teaspoon of table salt) a day for healthy younger adults and 1,500 mg a day for people age 51 or older, African-Americans, and those with high blood pressure, diabetes, or kidney disease. Unfortunately, many Americans consume five or more teaspoons of sodium daily.
Among the biggest sodium culprits are processed meats (e.g. hot dogs, bacon, sausage, deli meats) and "convenience" foods, such as prepared meals, canned soups, and rice, pasta, or potato mixes. If your food comes in a box, can, or plastic packaging, odds are it's high in sodium.
Other sodium sources are more surprising. Cookies and other goodies made with baking soda seem like sweet treats, but they can easily drive up your sodium load, as a teaspoon of baking soda contains more than 1,200 mg of sodium. Also, be careful with condiments. When you go to the ballgame this summer, a tablespoon of ketchup will add 167 mg of sodium (mustard, 56 mg) to the 513 mg of sodium in your average hot dog.
If you think you're making the right choice with canned beans, vegetables, or tuna, they typically are high in sodium. "Anything canned should be washed to get rid of the excess sodium," Jeffers advises.
Similarly, low-fat varieties may sound more healthful, but some products still contain ample sodium. For instance, a cup of fat-free milk has 127 mg of sodium, compared to 98 mg in whole milk.
BE SMART ABOUT SODIUM
Read the Nutrition Facts label of each product to see how much sodium it has per serving, and multiply the sodium amount by the number of servings per container. (Experts generally recommend avoiding products containing more than 200 mg of sodium per serving.) And, check the ingredients list for hidden sodium sources, such as baking soda/powder, monosodium glutamate, and compounds containing the word sodium. "Look at the foods you normally consume, and then go to the store and find an alternative, or choose the low-sodium version of your product," Jeffers says. "That's a good place to start."
Be careful when you read sodium-related terms on the product labeling (see "Sodium Semantics"). For instance, although a product marketed as "reduced sodium" has 25 percent less sodium than the regular version, that still amounts to 750 mg if the regular variety contains 1,000 mg of sodium.
SACRIFICE SODIUM, NOT FLAVOR
Face it, if you're like most men, you enjoy salty foods, and you might think you'll lose out on flavor if you abandon the salt. Fact is, you can overcome your salt craving within a few weeks of replacing it with herbs, spices, and other flavor aids. If you opt for salt substitutes, tell your doctor. Many of these products contain potassium chloride and may raise your potassium to harmful levels if taken with certain blood pressure medications.
"There are so many seasonings and flavor enhancers that don't have sodium. It's just about getting that idea out of your head that you need salt and changing the way you think about what you eat," Jeffers says.
"As with anything, take baby steps. If you want to succeed, give yourself time to make the transition," she adds. "Serving size could be your first step. If you're completely over-eating sodium-rich foods, don't just switch to low-sodium foods, but also eat less so you get less sodium."
RELATED ARTICLE: SODIUM SEMANTICS
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Here's a look at what the sodium-related terms on food packaging mean:
Sodium/salt-free: Less than 5 mg of sodium per serving
Very low sodium: 35 mg of sodium or less per serving
Low sodium: 140 mg of sodium or less per serving
Reduced sodium: Product has at least 25 percent less sodium than regular version
Light: Product has at least 50 percent less sodium than regular version
SOME TIPS TO LOWER YOUR SODIUM INTAKE
Food group Instead of ... Try eating ...
Meat/protein Bacon, hot dogs, Lean fresh or frozen
sausage, deli meats, unsalted beef,
canned meats, all poultry, pork, veal,
processed meats fish, and lamb
except low-sodium
varieties
Starches Rice/pasta/potato Whole-grain breads
mixes, potato chips, and pasta, brown
pretzels, popcorn, rice, fresh potatoes,
seasoned bread unsalted crackers,
crumbs, tortilla chips, pretzels, and
chips, corn chips, popcorn
crackers
Dairy Regular cheese Low-sodium cheese
Fruits and Canned vegetables, Fresh, frozen, or
vegetables vegetable juices, canned fruits; fresh
pork and beans, or frozen vegetables
canned dried beans (without sauce);
(e.g. kidney, pinto unsalted canned
or chickpeas), vegetables
sauerkraut
Condiments/ Pickles, olives, Lettuce, onions,
flavor aids salt, garlic or onion tomatoes, garlic or
salts, ketchup, onion powders,
mustard, soy/teriyaki vinegar, lemon juice,
sauces, relish, steak salt substitutes
or barbecue sauce (with doctor's
guidance)
Source: Laura Jeffers, RD, LD, Cleveland Clinic Department of
Nutrition Therapy
Source Citation
"Become sodium savvy and reduce your heart risks: most sodium comes from sources besides table salt, so read food labels carefully and explore more healthful alternatives." Men's Health Advisor 14.5 (2012): 6+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 8 May 2012.
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Friday, April 20, 2012
Hardcover bestsellers/nonfiction
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Title: Hardcover bestsellers/nonfiction Author(s): Dick Donahue Source: Publishers Weekly. 258.44 (Oct. 31, 2011): p13. Document Type: Article
Full Text:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
"Our Intellectual and cultural elites reject the God our parents believed In," asserts Buchanan. The bestselling author of such books as The Death of the West. How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization has been on a media blitzkrieg tour touting his latest: consecutive nights last week on Sean Hannity, and stops with Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Imus, Dobbs, Liddy, and many more. He's getting the word out and finding his audience as the political season heats up. Copies in print: 85,000.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
So Van Gogh didn't kill himself? That's the shocking theory proposed by Naifeh and Smith, who won a Pulitzer for their bio of Jackson Pollock. They argue that the great and tortured impressionist ran afoul of a couple of bizarre teenage boys on a long walk home, ending in his accidental shooting death. The book is selling well based on reviews only, as the author tour doesn't begin till this week--mostly at museums: the Met in New York, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the High in Atlanta, Dallas Museum of Art, LACMA in L.A., the Art Institute of Chicago, along with Politics & Prose in D.C. and Tattered Cover in Denver.
Jerry West is one of the NBA greats--both for his performance on the court with the takers and his spectacular career as a front office executive. He is the very image of the National Basketball Association--literally, his driving-to-the-basket silhouette is the NBA logo. Publically known as intense yet reticent, West, along with Jonathan Coleman, has written a story hailed for its candor and its remarkably measured notion of happiness. As he told the New York Times, "I'm hoping the book will be inspirational because you can overcome a lot of things in life and do something that makes you feel good--for a moment." What West did overcome, or come to terms with--a death in Korea of a beloved brother, an abusive father, unremitting self-criticism, not to mention six losses to the Celtics in the NBA finals--has resonated with reviewers and audiences, reports Little, Brown. "He's been tremendous and tireless," said a publicist. And that will surely resonate with those who remember no. 44 on the hardwood. 70,000 in print.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Hardcover Bestsellers/Nonfiction
October 31, 2011 Last Weeks
week on list
(1) Killing Lincoln. Bill O'Reilly & 1 4
Martin Dugard. Holt, $28
ISBN 978-0-8050-9307-0
(2) Boomerang. Michael Lewis. 2 3
Norton, $25.95
ISBN 978-0-393-08181-7
(3) Suicide of a Superpower. -- 1
Patrick J. Buchanan.
Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, $27.99
ISBN 978-0-312-57997-5
(4) Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible. 3 2
Paula Deen with Melissa Clark.
Simon & Schuster, $29.99
ISBN 978-1-4165-6407-2
(5) Nearing Home: Life, Faith and. -- 1
Finishing Well. Billy Graham Thomas
Nelson, $19.99
ISBN 978-0849948329
(6) Unbroken. Laura Hillenbrand. 9 49
Random House, $27
ISBN 978-1-4000-6416-8
(7) Seriously... I'm Kidding. 5 3
Ellen DeGeneres. Grand Central, $26.99
ISBN 978-0-446-58502-6
(8) Jacqueline Kennedy. Caroline Kennedy. 7 6
Hyperion, $60
ISBN 978-1-4013-2425-4
(9) That Used to Be Us. Thomas L. Friedman 8 7
& Michael Mandelbaum.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28
ISBN 978-0-374-28890-7
(10) West by West. Jerry West and, -- 1
Jonathan Coleman Little, Brown, $27.99
ISBN 978-0-316-05349-5
(11) Van Gogh: A Life. Steven Naifeh and -- 1
Gregory White Smith. Random House, $40
ISBN 978-0375507489
(12) I Never Thought I'd See the Day! 6 3
David Jeremiah. FaithWords, $24.99
ISBN 978-0-446-56595-0
(13) Every Day a Friday. Joel Osteen. 11 6
FaithWords, $24.99
ISBN 978-0-8929-6991-3
(14) Great by Choice. Jim Collins & 10 2
Morton T. Hansen. Harper, $29.99
ISBN 978-0-06-212099-1
(15) In the Garden of Beasts. 20 24
Erik Larson. Crown, $26
ISBN 978-0-307-40884-6
Source Citation
Donahue, Dick. "Hardcover bestsellers/nonfiction." Publishers Weekly 31 Oct. 2011: 13. Fine Arts and Music Collection. Web. 20 Apr. 2012.
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Friday, March 30, 2012
Small Town Peep Show
Whatever the merits of the Metalious case, the novel lives up very fully to its advance billing. It opens on a warm autumn day in the Thirties with a comparison between Indian summer and a woman (“Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases”). What follows is a carefully calculated expose of the comings and goings of a large cast of typical characters in a small New England town until another Indian summer some ten years later.
We learn that life behind the scenes in New Hampshire is not widely different, fictionally speaking, from life in Winesburg, Ohio, Hecate County, Conn. or Gibbsville, Pa. It is only (if that is possible) a little “riper,” a little more “hotly passionate.” a little more frankly detailed—and, perhaps a little more widely inclusive than the small-town chronicles of Messrs. Sherwood Anderson, Edmund Wilson and John O'Hara. The late Sinclair Lewis would no doubt have hailed Grace Metalious as a sister-in-arms against the false fronts and bourgeois pretensions of allegedly respectable communities, and certified her as a public accountant of what goes on in the basements, bedrooms and back porches of a “typical American town.”
Mrs. Metalious, who is a pretty fair writer for a first novelist, comes and goes with the Indian Summer air of an emancipated modern authoress who knows the earthy words and rarely stints to use them. Samples of the adventures in store for readers of Peyton Place would include the following: Successive violations of a 14-year-old girl by her stepfather, leading to an abortion sadly performed by the town's admirable doctor. A murder in a “shacker's” hut with secret burial of the remains in a sheep pen. A suicide in a bedroom closet: A carnival accident which amputates a young girl's arm. A high-school seduction in which the girl is bought-off by the boy's rich and corrupt-father. The seduction of the local dress-shop proprietress by the village schoolmaster. The deflowering of her nubile novelist-daughter by an erotically expert New York literary agent. A lengthy hard-cider binge in a locked cellar involving among others the town handyman who imbibes as a protest against his wife's multiple adulteries. The strangling of a pet tomcat at the feet of a dead spinster by a neurotic boy who has retchingly peered through a backyard hedge at the amorous activities of a neighbor couple.
If Mrs. Metalious can turn her emancipated talents to less lurid purposes, her future as novelist is a good bet. Another good bet is that the citizens of Gilmanton, N.H., can look forward to a busy Indian summer of open or surreptitious reading.
Source Citation Baker, Carlos. "Small Town Peep Show." New York Times Book Review (23 Sept. 1956): 4. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale, 2012. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Mar. 2012.
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Monday, March 12, 2012
Patient information
With information technology key to the development of the NHS, it will be interesting to see what community pharmacy gets. Currently I support, at a high monthly charge, the cost of maintaining a computerised patient medication record system in my pharmacy. I own the equipment and without the generous support of my wholesaler I would have had to pay for it all.
According to health policy across the water (N. Ireland health policy is difficult to read at the minute) we will have electronic prescribing in a few years. The next step is repeat dispensing, controlled by pharmacy, and then the development of medicine management programmes. This will only happen where community pharmacists are fully integrated within the NHS computer network. A major pilot is being set up and many companies are putting their names forward. There are rich pickings for the company that controls this system.
Where pharmacy is going in all this is not too clear. Other issues, such as selling of information and reducing prescription fraud, are driving the process. Without a strong voice through our representative organisations, we risk having IT systems imposed on us which may not serve our long term interests.
Beyond the systems, but implicitly linked to them, must be the right of pharmacists to patient information. Without it we will not be able to contribute towards improving patient care. Not knowing the diagnosis presents a major hurdle to pharmaceutical care. For example, the patient on atenolol might be suffering from angina or hypertension or both. The patient taking bendrofluazide 5mg may be suffering from hypertension or congestive heart failure.
Pharmacists working in GP surgeries and clinical pharmacists working on hospital words have always had access to this information. Why not community pharmacists?
GPs appear defiant in their opposition to any such move. They hide behind claims of patient confidentiality, when clearly their motive is self-interest. They know that this information is power, and they don't want to lose it.
Source Citation
"Patient information." Chemist & Druggist 6 Jan. 2001: 7. General OneFile. Web. 12 Mar. 2012.
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(Web-Page) http://writers2008.googlepages.com/homeEmail: leonard.wilson2009@hotmail.com(Album / Profile) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10035&id=1661531726&l=f3f19215d0
Email: leonard.wilson2009@hotmail.com
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
How I Write
[(interview date August 2007) In the interview below, Perrotta discusses his writing process and offers some advice to aspiring writers.]
[Pfaff]: If you came of age in the '70s and '80s, you'll almost certainly recognize the characters in Tom Perrotta's fiction--self-obsessed suburban strivers (and a few slackers) who might be worthy of our scorn yet somehow gain our sympathy. As a satirist, Perrotta manages to skewer his subjects with one hand and render them acutely human with the other, whether he's writing about the members of a New Jersey wedding band seeking transcendence in rock 'n' roll (The Wishbones) or cataloging the travails of a working-class kid on scholarship at an Ivy League university (Joe College). His fourth novel, Little Children, was adapted for the big screen in 2006, and as part of the writing team Perrotta was nominated for an Academy Award. He lives in Belmont, Mass., with his wife and two children.
Credits: The novels The Wishbones, Election, Joe College and Little Children and the short-story collection Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies.
[Perrotta]: Why: I trace it back to a lifelong love of stories. I remember, as a kid, being rapt, listening to the adults I knew tell stories. That's how I make meaning out of life--through stories.
Routine: I write in a home office, and I'm lucky enough to write every day. My working hours are mainly my kids' school hours. ... Generally speaking, I write from about 10 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. If I need to go further I will, but that happens very rarely, under the pressure of a deadline.
If I'm lucky, I use the period after I finish writing to get my exercise. I find writing generates a lot of nervous energy and it's great to ... burn it off.
Process: Not only do I not do an outline, I can't understand how anybody possibly could. Because at least if you're writing character based fiction, you have to know a lot about your characters before you can begin. So I write to discover my characters and in doing so, feel my way through the story.
Basically, I begin with a situation or a setting and a question: Who will win the election? Are the lovers going to run away together? ... The germ of Election, for instance, was a piece I read about a high school principal who became outraged when he learned that a pregnant girl had been elected prom queen, after which he burned all the votes, hoping to invalidate the election.
I think it would be death to know the answer before you set out to write. There's a point, maybe halfway or two-thirds through the book, where I kind of know where I'm going, but at that point I may have gone a year without answering the most basic questions of the story in my own mind.
Revising: I try to write the book as if I'm reading it, and so I can't go on to Chapter 2 until I feel that Chapter 1 is finished and quite workable. It's a very slow process, where I'm constantly going back to the beginning of Chapter 1 and rewriting every sentence. I polish it up as I go and, hopefully, by the time I write the last period of the first draft--which has taken me two to three years to write--it is, in a way the final draft.
Writing satire: I write work that appears to be satirical but actually isn't--meaning that often, early on, I introduce my characters as if they were stock figures and as if the reader should feel superior to them, which are the hallmarks of satire. Then, if things are working right, something will happen that humanizes those characters and lets them expand beyond the way that they've been typecast.
Advice: I'd advise people to consider getting a job where writing is the job, in journalism or advertising, instead of an MFA program. When I was in graduate school, I took a job as an advertising copywriter, which was very good for me, because I was going days feeling uninspired [with my fiction] and I wasn't getting any work done. But then I'd go into the ad agency and I'd work because I had to, and it taught me not to let myself off the hook. Once I started to treat my own writing as a job and not as a romantic undertaking, I actually got the work done.
Source Citation Perrotta, Tom, and Leslie Garisto Pfaff. "How I Write." Writer 120.8 (Aug. 2007): 66. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 266. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Feb. 2012.
Document URL
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..
Gale Document Number: GALE|H1100089202
[(interview date August 2007) In the interview below, Perrotta discusses his writing process and offers some advice to aspiring writers.]
[Pfaff]: If you came of age in the '70s and '80s, you'll almost certainly recognize the characters in Tom Perrotta's fiction--self-obsessed suburban strivers (and a few slackers) who might be worthy of our scorn yet somehow gain our sympathy. As a satirist, Perrotta manages to skewer his subjects with one hand and render them acutely human with the other, whether he's writing about the members of a New Jersey wedding band seeking transcendence in rock 'n' roll (The Wishbones) or cataloging the travails of a working-class kid on scholarship at an Ivy League university (Joe College). His fourth novel, Little Children, was adapted for the big screen in 2006, and as part of the writing team Perrotta was nominated for an Academy Award. He lives in Belmont, Mass., with his wife and two children.
Credits: The novels The Wishbones, Election, Joe College and Little Children and the short-story collection Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies.
[Perrotta]: Why: I trace it back to a lifelong love of stories. I remember, as a kid, being rapt, listening to the adults I knew tell stories. That's how I make meaning out of life--through stories.
Routine: I write in a home office, and I'm lucky enough to write every day. My working hours are mainly my kids' school hours. ... Generally speaking, I write from about 10 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. If I need to go further I will, but that happens very rarely, under the pressure of a deadline.
If I'm lucky, I use the period after I finish writing to get my exercise. I find writing generates a lot of nervous energy and it's great to ... burn it off.
Process: Not only do I not do an outline, I can't understand how anybody possibly could. Because at least if you're writing character based fiction, you have to know a lot about your characters before you can begin. So I write to discover my characters and in doing so, feel my way through the story.
Basically, I begin with a situation or a setting and a question: Who will win the election? Are the lovers going to run away together? ... The germ of Election, for instance, was a piece I read about a high school principal who became outraged when he learned that a pregnant girl had been elected prom queen, after which he burned all the votes, hoping to invalidate the election.
I think it would be death to know the answer before you set out to write. There's a point, maybe halfway or two-thirds through the book, where I kind of know where I'm going, but at that point I may have gone a year without answering the most basic questions of the story in my own mind.
Revising: I try to write the book as if I'm reading it, and so I can't go on to Chapter 2 until I feel that Chapter 1 is finished and quite workable. It's a very slow process, where I'm constantly going back to the beginning of Chapter 1 and rewriting every sentence. I polish it up as I go and, hopefully, by the time I write the last period of the first draft--which has taken me two to three years to write--it is, in a way the final draft.
Writing satire: I write work that appears to be satirical but actually isn't--meaning that often, early on, I introduce my characters as if they were stock figures and as if the reader should feel superior to them, which are the hallmarks of satire. Then, if things are working right, something will happen that humanizes those characters and lets them expand beyond the way that they've been typecast.
Advice: I'd advise people to consider getting a job where writing is the job, in journalism or advertising, instead of an MFA program. When I was in graduate school, I took a job as an advertising copywriter, which was very good for me, because I was going days feeling uninspired [with my fiction] and I wasn't getting any work done. But then I'd go into the ad agency and I'd work because I had to, and it taught me not to let myself off the hook. Once I started to treat my own writing as a job and not as a romantic undertaking, I actually got the work done.
Source Citation Perrotta, Tom, and Leslie Garisto Pfaff. "How I Write." Writer 120.8 (Aug. 2007): 66. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 266. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Feb. 2012.
Document URL
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Gale Document Number: GALE|H1100089202
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