If writers say they enjoy writing it's only because the activity is preferable to the guilt of not writing that precedes it and the melancholy of having written crap that follows it.
In his memoir Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchens quotes William Safire as saying that writers "should avoid clichés like the plague."
Saturday evening I received an email from an agent passing on my memoir. Say what you want about agents, but they do work long hours.
I recently finished Tim Hannigan's The Travel Writing Tribe. He approaches travel writing as both a thoughtful critic and a clear-eyed enthusiast, and through his wide reading – not just of travel literature but also academic studies of it – and his penetrating interviews with a diverse group of practitioners, he shows how this sometimes disparaged genre sparkles and illuminates by borrowing elements from all of the others. It is a scholarly work written for a general audience - the first for travel writing since Abroad in 1980 - but unlike Paul Fussell, Hannigan focuses on the contemporary scene. So it's not just a brilliant book but also a hopeful one.
The form rejection began, “Thanks so much for letting us look at your materials.” The “so much” rang false. I mean, if they were so grateful shouldn’t they at least have sent a personal rejection?
I’ve been debating whether to explain this to them or simply respond: “Thanks so much for your rejection.”
'The miracle of Christmas' is one of those expressions, like 'the kindness of strangers,' that you really want to be true. It's why I always send queries out in December.