Memoirs are going to be problematic sells for a while, though, because even if memoir means "based in … - Debra Monroe

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Sunday is the Academy Awards. Every time an actor says, 'I didn't expect this,' Ruth Bader Ginsburg will do a shot.

Debra Monroe

Memoirs are going to be problematic sells for a while, though, because even if memoir means "based in memory," right now, in the collective mind, memoir means "recovery. " When my agent and I started looking at small presses the possibility for my book, I realized most small presses were not publishing memoir, because they don't want to be associated with the genre that Mary Karr calls, half-facetiously, "literature's trashy cousin. "

Agent, Book, Cousin, Genre, Memories, Small

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Historians will look back on this era and how the Internet changed what we value, what we consider art, the way we think, the way we define what it means to be human. In Sincerity and Authenticity, Lionel Trilling describes the changes that occurred between about 1850 and 1920, due to the Industrial Revolution and the resulting migration of people from small communities to relative anonymity in cities. Because of that paradigm shift, ideas about what it means to be an individual underwent a transformation that leeched into all areas. Art, psychology, history, marriage, gender.

Art, Changes, Cities, Mean, Revolution, Thinking

There's still sexism in the world, so there's still sexism in publishing and in graduate school. But it is different. Now, it's more coded and harder to detect. It was more explicit when I was in school. There were no rules against male professors asking out female students. The reverse didn't happen since female professors were rare or nonexistent. Visiting writers came, 90% of them male, and some expected that a female student would materialize as his date for the visit.

Different, Female, Publishing, School, Sexism

I don't know a lot of writers, even writers who have been on the bestseller list for a few weeks, or writers who have gotten movie options, who can live on just their writing income. Once you break it down to the years it took to write the book, place it, promote it, and you pay the agent, pay the taxes, the annual income is not enough to live on comfortably. I do not have a starving artist inclination. I'm from the working class. I don't feel creative unless I feel like my house is going to be there and I'm going to be fed. I can't worry about money and write. Maybe some people can.

Artist, Book, List, People, Promote, Writing

I guess the biggest difference between me and many of today's female graduate students is that a lot of them were raised by mothers with careers, and they got college degrees studying with female professors. Both of those factors make the enterprise of educating yourself for a serious profession seem feasible.

College, Difference, Feasible, Female, Mother, Professors

The advice I give is , "Don't think of your career as a plan or blueprint. Think of it as growing toward the most light. Keep your eyes open about where the best experiences are happening. " Everyone wants to see how someone else managed, defying odds.

Defying, Eye, Giving, Growing, Light, Thinking