Links to Kick Off the Week

Happy August, happy Monday, and happy insanity. I’m looking at a crazy day, so I offer up some links to entertain you all while I go off and try not to get killed by the landslide of paperwork. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, please send a search party.

Write 15 Minutes a Day! — YA author Laurie Halse Anderson is hosting this writing challenge at her blog, encouraging newbie (and not so new) writers to put in 15 minutes a day. She’ll have prompts and thoughts on writing all month long.

Scared Straight: Writers and the New Happiness — An interesting essay that looks at the old myth that writers had a propensity for madness and drug abuse that allowed them to soar to heights of creativity, and at how modern writers seem to have shifted to the new healthier outlook that has become more acceptable in society.

The Paris Review interviews — An archive of the literary magazine’s interviews with authors through the decades. This is a great collection and inspirational resource. If you haven’t checked it out before, I highly recommend it. Also, not online yet but still in stores: the current (summer) issue of The Paris Review has interviews with Samuel R. Delany and William Gibson, both of which are excellent.

Why to Take Notes — Author Kevin Brockmeier offers a list of things people said to him at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop between 1995 and 1997 (in chronological order). Very amusing, and a good example of why it pays to jot things down.