Looking for a Few Good Book Reviewers

I try not to mix my business writing with my pleasure writing on this site, but from time to time I've posted book reviews in the field of nonprofit organizations and foundations, public policy, and fundraising.

Now I have an opportunity for you, dear readers. The Website I edit is looking for new book reviewers. These would be paying jobs, but I can't say we pay a lot. Still, it's a publishing credit, which might be very attractive to some of you.

What's the catch? Well, the books we review are all nonfiction and all related to the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. We'd be assigning the books to you; these aren't books you'd be choosing by yourself. Still, many people find the topic fascinating. You may just be one of those people.

Ok, if you're interested, please send me an email at mws@foundationcenter.org and in the subject line write "Off the Shelf reviewers." I get hundreds of emails every day and it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff sometimes, so that subject line at least will help. Also, please include a link or two to show me some writing samples if you have any.

If you're assigned a piece, you'll be given a deadline by which to submit the review. We'd send you the book and cover postage for its return as well. (Sorry, you can't keep the book.) Reviewers will be paid upon publication.

If you have questions, ask away.

Soon It Can Be Told

I'm excited about a project I'm not ready to fully divulge just yet. It saw a deadline pass the other day. A few of you know what I'm talking about.

Suffice it to say, it will involve writing. Quality stuff, I'd venture to say. And at least one writer with a book in traditional-publication production is involved. The final number of participants has not been determined yet, but I believe that when all is said and done, we'll have something to write home about. Certainly something to talk about on our blogs. I know I'll be doing so.

Soon. Soon, my precious....

A Return to NaNormalcy?

Well, life has quite the repertoire. It throws knuckleballs, sliders, change-ups, as well as hellacious curve balls. Lately, I've faced a bunch of different pitchers who successfully twisted me into knots. The gap of nearly two months between posts should be evidence of that.

Now that baseball season is done, however, National Novel Writing Month has begun. Once again, I've entered NaNo WriMo (see my little "participant" badge?), and I'll take on a new set of knot-twisting challenges. But today I actually did something different: I ate my lunch in a room with an electrical outlet, which enables me to use my archaic laptop. I use the outlet to spark up the gerbils that run on the Intel wheel inside. As a result, I was able to write today.

It only accounted for 400 words so far. Maybe I'll get more tonight after I put the girls to bed. But it feels good to go out of my way to write creatively.

How are you doing? Are you participating in Nano? Are you feeling creative?

10 Years After

Where I live, the events of 9/11 were not just images on a television or messages of heartfelt sadness. They were those things, of course, but they were also a motorcade of funerals, a stream of floral arrangements, a vital Thanksgiving meal months later. That day led to random moments of pain and sadness when otherwise meaningless things were noticed to be missing. And it also led to phone calls from people whose voices had almost been forgotten, calling..."just because, well, it's been a while, you know?" and we knew.

For me, 9/11 was highly personal for reasons I won't get into here. But it changed things in me about my writing, about what I wanted to accomplish and be remembered for: Writers write.

Those who know me personally or even merely from random lines in places like AgentQuery Connect or From the Write Angle or via Twitter probably get a sense that I like to joke around. Often, I joke because I take most of life so seriously — sometimes too seriously, perhaps. After 9/11 I took my manuscript very seriously. It had been mostly notes before that day. Maybe a few dozen pages of tripe were written. I don't think any of it survives except for its setting. My story took place in Hoboken, New Jersey, which is just across the river from New York City. The attacks were a point of demarcation unlike any other in my lifetime and I needed to decide when my story took place.

I decided that it was to be a year in the life of a family: From 9/10/00 to 9/10/01. I wrote nightly for months and most of that ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. It was my first serious attempt at a novel, and I made the mistakes that most writers make on such efforts. Too much back story, too many details that don't matter. I ended up putting it aside for months and working on other things. Short stories, mostly. A lot of freelance assignments. Some of which I'm proud of.

Eventually, I went back to my story, took it apart piece by piece, and started to build again. Perhaps too subtly, I wove 9/11 into the manuscript. It's there, but the story takes place before the events, so it must be done with care. I've had people tell me to change the date of the story or to make it more apparent. And I still think about it. The manuscript still has elements I'm uncertain about, and I've put it aside several times to work on other projects and let my mind work through those elements and help me decide if they're flaws or just need a bit more polishing.

By the time the polishing is done and it goes off to agents, I suspect I'll have come close to finishing another manuscript and several other short stories and a bunch more articles I'm proud of. But this story is one that will be with me forever, whether it gets published or not.

In a sense, it will be part of my personal 9/11 legacy. If nothing else, I have that.