December 31, 2011

25 literary resolutions for 2012. What's yours?

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When 2012 arrives this week­end, there will be res­o­lu­tions aplen­ty. Diets! Exer­cise! Get orga­nized! Fig­ure out Google+! Quit smok­ing! Jack­et Copy asked writ­ers, edi­tors and pub­lish­ers what their lit­er­ary res­o­lu­tions will be. Join them and tell us yours.

Ben Ehren­re­ich, author of the novel "Ether" and win­ner of a 2011 Nation­al Mag­a­zine Award for his arti­cle "The End": That's an easy one: write, write, write and write some more.

Richard Lange, author of the 2013 novel "Gath­er Dark­ness" (Mul­hol­land): I'm going to reread "Moby-Dick," "Crime & Punishment," and "The Scar­let Letter." Every time I go back to books that I loved as a kid, I learn more about myself as a writer now.

Dana Spi­ot­ta, author of the novel "Stone Ara­bia": I have many books I want to read this year. For exam­ple, I have this invit­ing stack of Hol­ly­wood biogra­phies and mem­oirs: "Rose­bud" by David Thom­son, "Frank: The Voice" by James Kaplan, "Run-through" by John House­man, "Memo" by David O. Selznick, "A Girl Like I" by Anita Loos, and "Van­i­ty Will Get You Some­where: An Auto­bi­og­ra­phy" by Joseph Cot­ten.

Antoine Wil­son, author of the 2012 novel "Panora­ma City" (Houghton Mif­flin Har­court): For 2012, I expect to be doing more inter­act­ing with strangers, thanks to the new book com­ing out, so my res­o­lu­tion is sim­ple: To be able to clear­ly and con­cise­ly answer the fol­low­ing ques­tion: "What are you read­ing?"

Jer­vey Ter­val­on, author of "Serv­ing Mon­ster" and founder of Lit­er­a­ture for Life: Start work­ing on a new novel that will amuse and con­sume me; and I will not allow myself, not even for a sec­ond, to dwell on the bleak­ness of the pub­lish­ing indus­try.

Eliz­a­beth Crane, author of the 2012 novel "We Only Know So Much" (Harper­Peren­ni­al): I don't know if this is exact­ly lit­er­ary, but the only real res­o­lu­tion I'm con­sid­er­ing, which I haven't etched in stone yet, is to give up watch­ing enter­tain­ment shows (ET, etc). This might or might not help my writ­ing, if only inso­far as it will free up an hour of my life every day, but the hope is that it will help my celebrities-and-celebrity-news-makes-me-want-to-pull-my-hair-out prob­lem.

Rachel Kush­n­er, author "Telex from Cuba," a Nation­al Book Award final­ist: This year I am inspired by my friend Marisa Sil­ver's res­o­lu­tion from last year, which was no inter­net (except e-mail and occa­sion­al­ly face­book). My res­o­lu­tion is exact­ly that. Per­haps that's book­ish, in that it might cre­ate more time in which actu­al books can be read. I feel bet­ter already, sens­ing the loss of this con­ve­nient form of self-sabotage--of time. Time is of a pre­mi­um. I don't want to waste any. I have a feel­ing I will miss out on very lit­tle with­out the inter­net. What­ev­er it is, if it's impor­tant enough it will find me.

Marisa Sil­ver, author of the short story col­lec­tion "Alone With You": Read more poet­ry. Use fewer com­mas.

Evan Ratliff, found­ing edi­tor of the mul­ti­me­dia iPad mag­a­zine The Atavist: I'm not a big res­o­lu­tion maker, but I would say on the lit­er­ary front mine is pret­ty sim­ple and obvi­ous. It's build­ing on some­thing I start­ed late this year, which is to carve out spe­cif­ic, dis­con­nect­ed, undis­tract­ed time to read every day. Some­times it's sit­ting out­side with a paper­back, hav­ing left the phone and all other devices back at the office. Some­times it's actu­al­ly read­ing a book on the phone (as you might imag­ine, I'm a big fan of read­ing books on the phone!), but hav­ing turned off all the phone's con­nec­tions. It's like exer­cise, for me: The whole day gets bet­ter if I set aside the time for it. And as much as I love read­ing dig­i­tal texts, it's not the same if I stop three times in the mid­dle to deal with some seemingly-urgent-but-not-really email........

25 literary resolutions for 2012. What's yours?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/12/25-literary-resolutions-for-2012.html

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