The other day, driving down a quiet street in my neighborhood, I saw a woman walking towards me. She was in the middle of my lane, intently tapping the keyboard of her smartphone. I slowed, thinking she would see me – or at least hear me – but she kept on walking and typing. Finally I stopped and beeped my horn. She moved to the shoulder, her eyes and thumbs still focused on her screen. I was annoyed by her behavior until I realized that it was probably the finest example I had ever seen – after a career spent in newsrooms – of the all-consuming nature of composition.
What's the difference between travel writers and Republicans? The former like the present tense while the latter, at least when talking about the pandemic, prefer the past.
My memoir ties a coming-of-age story (of a young man struggling with love and his dream of becoming a writer) to a historical drama (the defining one of the second half of the 20th Century). In a normal time, in a normal country, such a book would not have difficulty finding a home. But unfortunately I live in neither.
My favorite show growing up, hands down, was “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” While my friends were drawn to comic book Superheroes, or their more human equivalents in Westerns, I wanted to be Rob Petrie: charming, funny, with a beautiful and loving wife in the suburbs (this was the early ’60s) and a creative and enjoyable job in the city. It was Carl Reiner’s sitcom masterpiece that planted in my childish mind the odd and seemingly delightful idea of becoming a writer.
With editors freed from meetings and commutes there's less of a wait now for rejections.
Freed from meetings and commutes, shouldn’t editors now have more time to read submissions?