On output

I've been thinking about this topic lately (read: suffering pangs of guilt over not writing). Interesting article on The Curse of the Prolific Writer.

Gee, I'd love someone to curse me like that.

Any one else out there?

I ask this periodically: Apropos of my last entry, are there any other women out there (on LJ or otherwise) that you know of who are holding down a full-time job outside the home AND raising children AND trying to write novels? Am I really as rare a bird as I think?

Edited to add: You do realize that if there are a lot of 'em pulling this off, then I have no excuse. (Great. More guilt.)

Marketing the "Momoir"

Fascinating article on the change in publishing chances for a certain "type" of book:

Motherhood's own cutesy category--momoir--is similarly controversial in the industry, from what we could tell. Shaye Areheart groaned when we uttered the word. "It's an attempt to pigeonhole subjects and writers," she said. She thinks that momoir and terms like it come from the youth-obsessed television industry, where she sees pressure to make things "hip or cool that aren't necessarily hip or cool." She adds, "Some stories are just important and that should be enough."

Andi Buchanan thinks that there's a persistent, underlying prejudice against stories that take motherhood seriously. Even the word momoir is tainted, she thinks--a compound of "memoir," with its air of respectability and literary cachet, and "mommy," with its don't-take-her-seriously-she's-just-a-mom overtone. "The attitude [among publishers] seems to be, ‘What could be less compelling than the secret life of moms?' " she says.

Read the whole thing here.

Happy birthday

Happy birthday to jonquil! Glad you got some good loot to celebrate the occasion.