Friday Round Up, Oh Such Fun

Visiting from Combreviations we have Laura to round up the week:

Ladies and gents, a lot of things happened this week that were important (check Nathan Bransford's round up for those). And a lot of other entertaining things happened, which is what I care about. Orbit is launching a short fiction imprint for sci-fi, a book on the history of Wonder Woman is out, and a lady in her 90s won $100k for poetry (so don't worry about personal writing success, reader types, unless you are at least a century old). Memoirs are big now, with Portia de Rossi (bulimia and then Ellen!) and Sarah Silverman (bedwetting!) writing. I know they didn't learn to write from writing manuals, but maybe Sarah learned from these 10 seafaring novels.

You can also get help from Agatha Christie, or follow Isabelle Allende's Sunday, or even read up on the path Tinkers took to the Pulitzer. Of course, it's not all sunshine and unicorns in publishing (or in life), which is why Elizabeth Berk...er, Jessie Spano is writing a book on self esteem. And we can overlook her onetime addiction to caffeine pills because hey, all good writers have addictions (conveniently listed here). Sadly, writers have vices because writing is a lonely endeavor. Writing also makes you suffer from diseases like serial novelization, and forces us all to live in a world where Twilight vampires top the list of richest (fictional) people. And, after all that, art might not actually make you a better person and everyone will be a jerk to you because of your divorce memoir.

Now, before we get all angry, and start telling Cormac McCarthy he doesn't know the Southwest from a Taco Bell, we should all take deep breaths and decide: who would you rather do? Celebrities versus fictional characters edition! Or, alternately, if you are of a sweeter, less sex driven disposition, look at this edition of The Jungle Book Kipling inscribed for his little girl, and this original Alice manuscript. As Shirley would say, that's nice.

So hey, maybe Twitter isn't that novel a concept, and the Internet is toxic to your writing and fiction writ large, and maybe Yoko Ono's rare book collection is better than yours and JK Rowling on a political rant is a better writer than most of those agonizing over their work, and yes, almost all women on crime novels are cliches. But chin up, sirs and madams—you never know what good things you'll find in your next book, and it is officially weekend time.

Until next week! (Or until Monday at Combreviations, whichever comes first!)