Want some advice from Ford Madox Ford on how to tell if your novel (or any novel, really) is any good? “Open the book to page 99 and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you,” he said. It may sound arbitrary. But if you think about it, page 99 is far enough in that you should have already established your characters and setting … so whatever is on that page is representative of the tone and heart of the book. It would be in full swing by that point but not far enough along to be mired in who did what or how this ties to that. (Although you could chose page 87 or 102 for the same purpose.)
A new site called Page 99 Test is taking that advice seriously and will soon allow people to upload page 99 of their novels for criticism from internet people.

via Guardian UK

Word Pirate Laura passed this along to the group. It is a video where John Cleese talks about creativity. From Laura:

This is worth watching. John Cleese … touches on how your mind continues to edit your work unconsciously. He also talks about getting interrupted, like we were talking about at the meeting!

He suggests that 2 things will help create an oasis for your creativity. You need:

boundaries of space

and

boundaries of time

This explains why I get my best ideas when I am driving. It is the only time I let myself get bored and just think.

Why you should never date a writer by a grammar. The myths of dating a writer, and the reality. Example:

Writers will offer you an interesting perspective on things. Yes. Constantly. While you’re trying to watch TV or take a shower. You will have to listen to observations all day long, in addition to being asked to read the observations we wrote about when you were at work and unavailable for bothering. It will be almost as annoying as dating a stand-up comedian, except if you don’t find these observations scintillating we will think you’re dumb, instead of uptight.

and:

Writers can think through their feelings. So don’t start an argument unless you’re ready for a very, very lengthy explication of our position, our feelings about your position, and what scenes from our recent fiction the whole thing is reminding us of.

and:

Writers are surrounded by interesting people. Every last one of whom is imaginary.

It’s funny ’cause it’s true. (Via Bookslut)

The archive of David Foster Wallace is now open at the Harry Ransom Center at University of Texas at Austin. From the press release:

The collection is made up of 34 boxes and is divided into three main sections: works, personal and career-related materials and copies of works by Don DeLillo. The works section covers the period between 1984 and 2006 and includes material related to Wallace’s novels, short stories, essays and magazine articles.

Among the things you can view online, there’s a handwritten page of a draft of Infinite Jest, a sampling of Wallace’s teaching material, and most interesting to me, an inventory of the books from Wallace’s personal library. You can scroll through and get an idea of what he liked to read. There is a lot of Don DeLillo, for example, and a lot of psychology books.

Jacqueline Muñoz, the librarian at the Ransom Center who cataloged the 300-some books says, “Of the more than 300 titles in his collection, there are maybe 10 or 15 that are not annotated—not simply with underlined passages but ample and personally revealing margin notes.”

Looking through the list of books, I wrote down 12 titles I would like to read. Not because I want to be like Wallace, or something, but because they look like rad books. You should check it out. (Via HTMLGiant)

Put a book on your wall! Postertext prints every single word of (some classic) books on a poster, along with a cutout of an image related to the book. The one above is Ulysses. Cool!

Newest Word Pirate Ken Weaver is reading at the Why There Are Words reading series this Thursday at in Sausalito. It’s at 7 p.m. at Studio 333. The theme is Body Language.

Go Ken!

The History Channel says it is. They scanned a death mask found in Germany with 3D computer technology and came up with this image.

Of course, according to this article, no one knows if the death mask that the image is based on is really Shakespeare or not, so this could just be some dude.

If it is him, scientists “say it proves the writer suffered from cancer towards the end of his life.”

Here is a real image of Shakespeare: