Search Results for: fiction

Lorrie Moore on the Difficulties of Constructing a Writing Life

Photo: AP Images

From the time I first started writing, the trick for me has always been to construct a life in which writing could occur. I have never been blocked, never lost faith (or never lost it for longer than necessary, shall we say) never not had ideas and scraps sitting around in notebooks or on Post-its adhered to the desk edge, but I have always been slow and have never had a protracted run of free time. I have always had to hold down a paying job of some sort and now I’m the mother of a small child as well, and the ability to make a literary life while teaching and parenting (to say nothing of housework) is sometimes beyond me. I don’t feel completely outwitted by it but it is increasingly a struggle. If I had a staff of even one person, or could tolerate a small amphetamine habit, or entertain the possibility of weekly blood transfusions, or had been married to Vera Nabokov, or had a housespouse of even minimal abilities, a literary life would be easier to bring about. (In my mind I see all your male readers rolling their eyes. But your female ones—what is that? Are they nodding in agreement? Are their fists in the air?) It’s hardly news that it is difficult to keep the intellectual and artistic hum of your brain going when one is mired in housewifery. This is, I realize, an old complaint from women, but for working women everywhere it continues to have great currency.

-Lorrie Moore, in the Paris Review (2001).

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'Friendship': The Full First Chapter from Emily Gould's New Novel

Emily Gould | Friendship | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | July 2014 | 8 minutes (1,893 words)

 

Below is the opening chapter of Friendship, the new novel by Emily Gould, who we’ve featured often on Longreads in the past. Thanks to Gould and FSG for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book from WORD Bookstores

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What Happens When the Internet Takes Over Your Home: Virus Edition

I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows. The lights are flashing. My alarm clock is blasting Skrillex or Deadmau5 or something, I don’t know. I never listened to dubstep, and in fact the entire genre is on my banned list. You see, my house has a virus again.

Technically it’s malware. But there’s no patch yet, and pretty much everyone’s got it. Homes up and down the block are lit up, even at this early hour. Thankfully this one is fairly benign. It sets off the alarm with music I blacklisted decades ago on Pandora. It takes a picture of me as I get out of the shower every morning and uploads it to Facebook. No big deal.

I don’t sleep well anyway, and already had my Dropcam Total Home Immersion account hacked, so I’m basically embarrassment-proof. And anyway, who doesn’t have nudes online? Now, Wat3ryWorm, that was nasty. That was the one with the 0-day that set off everyone’s sprinkler systems on Christmas morning back in ’22. It did billions of dollars in damage.

Mat Honan, in Wired, with a fictional account of living in the internet-connected home of the future.

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Photo: jonathan_moreau, Flickr

Maya Angelou on the Joys of Being Edited

When I finish maybe fifty pages and read them—fifty acceptable pages—it’s not too bad. I’ve had the same editor since 1967. Many times he has said to me over the years or asked me, Why would you use a semicolon instead of a colon? And many times over the years I have said to him things like: I will never speak to you again. Forever. Goodbye. That is it. Thank you very much. And I leave. Then I read the piece and I think of his suggestions. I send him a telegram that says, OK, so you’re right. So what? Don’t ever mention this to me again. If you do, I will never speak to you again. About two years ago I was visiting him and his wife in the Hamptons. I was at the end of a dining room table with a sit-down dinner of about fourteen people. Way at the end I said to someone, I sent him telegrams over the years. From the other end of the table he said, And I’ve kept every one! Brute! But the editing, one’s own editing, before the editor sees it, is the most important.

-Maya Angelou, in a 1990 Paris Review interview with George Plimpton.

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Photo: wheelockcollege, Flickr

College Students: Send Us Your Summer Stories

Student journalists and recent grads! Are you writing for an internship this summer? Share your work with a wider audience via College Longreads. We’ll consider published news or nonfiction articles or essays of 1,500 words or longer. E-mail links to aileen@longreads.com, or post links to Twitter tagged #college #longreads.

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Making the Magazine: A Reading List

Magazine nerds, here we go: A starter collection of behind-the-scenes stories from some of your most beloved magazines, including The New Yorker, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair and the New York Review of Books, plus now-defunct publications like Might, George, Sassy and Wigwag. Share your favorite behind-the-magazine stories with us on Twitter or Facebook: #longreads. Read more…

Yes, All Women: A Reading List of Stories Written By Women

This week, a lot happened. A misogynist went on a violent rampage. #YesAllWomen took off on Twitter. Dr. Maya Angelou, feminist author and all-around genius (and don’t get me started on her doctor honorary), died at 86 years old. This week, I present a long list of essays, articles and interviews written by women. Many are about women, too. Some are lighthearted; others reflect on the events of the past week. I included a variety of subjects to honor those who might be triggered by the deadly violence of last week’s shooting, because women do not only write in the wake of tragedy—we write, we exist, for all time. So in this list there is reflection and humor; there are books and music and religion; there are all kinds of stories, fiction and non. Read what you need. Engage or escape.

1. “Summer in the City.” (Emma Aylor, May 2014)

Aylor, author of Twos, uses #YesAllWomen to write about about the sexual harassment she experienced as she researched her dissertation on the work of Wallace Stevens.

2. “In Relief of Silence and Burden.” (Roxane Gay, May 2014)

The author of An Untamed State and critically acclaimed badass gives her “testimony … so we can relieve ourselves of silence and burden” in the vein of #YesAllWomen, sharing stories of harassment, abuse and more.

3. “Not All Women: A Reflection on Being a Musician and Female.” (Allison Crutchfield, Impose Magazine, May 2014)

A wide range of female musicians react to a depressingly misogynistic article in Noisey about how to tour in a dude-dominated band. They share what they’ve learned on the road, emphasizing self-care, communication with bandmates, and doing what you need to do to feel safe and be your best self.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo: Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for Al Jazeera America

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Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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Submissions

If You’ve Published a Story and Would Like Us to Consider It for an Editor’s Pick

To submit an already published story for Editor’s Picks consideration, the best way to share it with us is via  @Longreads on Twitter, or tagging a tweet with the #longreads hashtag. 

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If You’d Like to Pitch Us an Original Story for Publication

Longreads accepts pitches for original work and pays competitive rates. We’re not accepting any fiction at this time.

We are a very small team and receive many pitches and submissions each day. We only respond if we are interested in publishing your piece, so we strongly recommend submitting simultaneously to other publications. Please email story pitches, essay submissions, and other queries to hello@longreads.com. Adding a bit of detail and context in your subject line helps to make your message stand out.

Essays and Features

Our pieces typically run between 2,000 and 6,000 words, but can be longer or broken up into a series depending on the length and subject matter. 

Personal essays should be submitted on spec, and we pay $500 per essay. We look for smart, original angles and fresh, unique voices. Here are some of our favorites: 

We accept pitches for critical essays and columns. Rates start at $500, with the rate varying depending on the level of reporting and research required.  Here are a few examples:

Longreads features that require original reporting should also be submitted as pitches. These features are edited and fact-checked. We are interested in collaborating with artists and photographers on stories, and are open to working with partners you may have in mind. Tell us what makes your story incredible and urgent, why you have the goods to write it, and why Longreads is the place to tell it.

We pay competitive rates for features depending on the degree of reporting required and the complication of your proposal. Base payment begins at $1,500, and we will work with you to pay you a solid fee and also cover expenses. Here are examples of this type of work:

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Some Tips

It can take us a considerable amount of time to review pitches and read submissions, which means we are unable to respond to everyone. For this reason, we think it’s a great idea for you to pitch your stories to other publications in addition to Longreads — but please include a note to us if you are doing so.

If you do decide to pitch something exclusively to Longreads, give us a deadline to consider your idea before taking your pitch to other outlets.

If we don’t accept your initial pitch, pitch us again! We reject stories for a variety of reasons: a story may not be quite right for us, and sometimes it’s all about timing.

A Well-Rounded Scholar: The Many Alter Egos of A. D. Harvey

Photo by Nicholas Boos

Charitably, we can see the practice of reviewing one’s own works as a kind of knowing critique of the insider trading that can occur among authors and reviewers. Why bother to solicit reviews for your books when you can write them yourself? There may, however, be something more poignant here. Even for holders of tenured university positions, scholarship can make for a lonely life. One spends years on a monograph and then waits a few more years for someone to write about it. How much lonelier the life of an independent scholar, who does not have regular contact, aggravating as that can sometimes be, with colleagues. Attacking one’s own book can be seen as an understandable response to an at times intolerable isolation. How comforting to construct a community of scholars who can analyse, supplement and occasionally even ruthlessly criticize each other’s work. I’ve traced the connections between A. D. Harvey, Stephanie Harvey, Graham Headley, Trevor McGovern, John Schellenberger, Leo Bellingham, Michael Lindsay and Ludovico Parra, but they may be part of a much wider circle of friends.

—Russian literature scholar Eric Naiman wanted to track a minor literary hoax to its source. What he found instead is an ever-expanding network of hard-to-trace scholars citing, reviewing, and plagiarizing each other’s work. Could they all be the fictional creations of one A. D. Harvey, an isolated British researcher? Naiman recounts his detective work in this 2013 story from the Times Literary Supplement.

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