For the locals: The Decatur Book Festival is next weekend (Sept. 1-3). You should go, of course.
Publishing and Personality
While the names James Frey, Nasdijj, and JT LeRoy will surely go down as catchphrases for fabrication in the memoir genre, my growing fear is that those writers may only exist as the extreme cases among a generation (admittedly, my own generation) of writers who are tempted to dangerously and falsely exoticize their identities for the purpose of promoting themselves to agents and editors.
Here’s a good article on publishing and personality in Poets & Writers.
Synopsis…
Ever try and write a one sentence synopsis of a novel? Your novel? It’s painful, daunting. Necessary. I don’t have an obvious hook. My character isn’t an Iranian woman, a former male prostitute, a galavanting criminal, a serious-minded Indian teenager making her way in American suburbia. Here are my drafts so far:
A double-threaded bildungsroman spanning from 1960s rural
America to the 1990s, Ties of Blood, Sin, and Ink follows two cousins through their search for meaning within themselves and the world around them, a world rich in the pain and grace of love, relationships, and existence.
Ties of Blood, Sin, and Ink guides the reader through the blurry line between childhood and adulthood, a line cousins Barb and Debbie struggle to understand and define for themselves.
ETA: Lame! Back to the drawing board.
Amber Nicole Brooks 