Wow, this is extensive and very useful. Thanks to Lincoln Michel for taking the time to break it down and peel away some of the layers of mystery surrounding how journals work.
Cool essay by Catherine Lacey in BuzzFeed about being interviewed about your book and being mistaken for your protagonist. Somebody once said, all fiction is memoir, or something like that. Maybe it is, but not exactly.
She says:
I realized that when reporters tease out similarities between novelists and their protagonists, it’s not only boring and lazy, but offensive to the whole point of writing fiction.
Twenty-one authors tell BuzzFeed Books how they wrote their first books—what obstacles they overcame, what happened, how they feel in the aftermath. It’s a very instructive read, and it shows a pretty good range of experiences. For whatever reason, the part about writing something before the first book is published—a novel that won’t ever be published (a prequel)—stuck out for me. Also the fact that some were shocked when their first books sold. And I love when Sam Lipsyte tells his marketing team at a large publisher that he wants to be on Oprah. Read it here.
Joe Sullivan 