This week in books 4/7/17

The High Line. Follow me on Instagram! @nathanbransford

This week! In books and publishing!

First off, let’s help share the wealth. If you see a great publishing link that you think deserves to be seen by a bigger audience, kindly send it my way! You can email me at nathan@nathanbransford.com or just do the old fashioned thing and @ me on Twitter: @nathanbransford. I, and this wonderful community, thank you kindly.

Second off, I don’t know if you know this but the Bransford Blog Readers are some SERIOUSLY INCREDIBLE bracket pickers. The Bransford Blog Challenge group was the 477th highest group out of the tens of thousands of groups on ESPN (for reference, my family challenge group came in around 45,000). We even peaked at 77 overall before the final game. And to be the winer in a competitive group like that you had to be in the 99.9% percentile of all bracket pickers. Which I wasn’t. But City Boy71 1 was!! Please reach out to claim your prize.

Now then.

We live in a hypercritical time where everyone is a critic and there are reviews for everything under the sun. I really needed this post from Natalie Whipple on sometimes stepping back and enjoying things just to enjoy them.

I make no secret of my love for Moby-Dick, but I never knew that Ray Bradbury, of all people, wrote the screenplay for the John Huston movie adaptation. The story of how that came to be is too crazy for words.

Agent Jessica Faust at BookEnds wrote a very interesting post about her use of the service Query Manager, which is taking some of the pain out of reading and responding to queries. Authors, have you used it? What do you think?

Speaking of writing and technology, the creators of Canva reached out to me, they provide custom book templates that you can adapt for your own use. Very curious to know what you think about this.

Mindfulness is all the rage, and you may not be surprised to learn that it has benefits for creativity.

After writing some books, experiencing some stress, and then losing track of her love of writing, writer Catherine McKenzie found a way to reconnect with that love. (With some help from Mexico).

Good friends Christina Lauren wrote a post over a Time makes the case that writing romance novels is a feminist act.

Writing a nonfiction book proposal? Editor Peter Ginna linked to this interview at Black Perspectives with all sorts of tips.

And my friend Leah Fessler wrote a really facscinating post about how anthropomorphism is a sign of intelligence, which I’ll remind myself the next time I feel dumb for acting my recliner like it has a complicated inner life.

Comment! of! the! week! comes from k bot, who in response to not stopping yourself from being creative relayed some great advice from a guidance councilor:

Well said. I think that inner voice is sometimes also an echo from school, parents and friends…we are told often that if you are creative, you probably can’t do much with it anyway, so maybe just be creative in your spare time. It’s easier to believe you’re not creative if you can’t see a future for it. A guidance councillor (!) at my old school in the late 80’s said creative jobs will give you years of Kraft dinner and camping trips, while REAL jobs offer Red Lobster and Disney.
He. Was. Awesome.

And finally, think your novel is unimportant? On the contrary. Writer Bryn Greenwood makes the convincing case that it can literally change the world.

Have a great weekend!