{"id":416,"date":"2015-04-16T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=416"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:42:50","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:42:50","slug":"bits-bobs-and-blurbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=416","title":{"rendered":"Bits, Bobs, and Blurbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since I recently received my very first real-life, official, honest-to-god blurb request, I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about it. Working on it has been a bit of a revelation&#8211;it&#8217;s a challenge, and a responsibility, and an honor, and lord help me it is HARD to do. So, naturally, I consulted the intertubes and found an interesting article on the topic by <a href=\"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2013\/05\/27\/an-examination-of-the-wily-book-blurb\/\" target=\"_blank\">Chuck Wendig<\/a> (with a number of amusing faux blurb examples, including the ever-useful &#8220;Better than <i>Cats<\/i>!&#8221;). Just as interesting were the comments, from writers and readers alike, exhibiting a range of opinions on blurbs and their usefulness, or lack thereof. <\/p>\n<p>The upshot is, I&#8217;m trying to craft something that&#8217;s enticing, that is specific to the story at hand rather than generic. I also keep reminding myself that I&#8217;m not writing a review&#8230;which is what I&#8217;m more used to doing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\nIn the process of my neurotic googling over the past few days, I also ran across this article in the <i>New York Times<\/i> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/12\/08\/magazine\/the-dutch-elm-disease-of-creative-minds.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">self-doubt<\/a> and its pernicious ability to cripple writerly creativity. We writers have a unique relationship to our inner critics&#8211;as the article&#8217;s author points out, &#8220;the problem with my inner critic is that it\u2019s inseparable from my outer critic, which is the means by which I earn a fair proportion of what for rhetorical purposes I will call &#8216;my living.'&#8221; We are forever faced with the dilemma of having to compartmentalize our capacity for self-criticism, harness it for productive purposes when it&#8217;s expedient and necessary, and ignoring it when we need to. I&#8217;m still struggling with that dilemma, myself, but it <i>is<\/i> reassuring, sort of, to remind myself it&#8217;s all a part of the writer&#8217;s process.<\/p>\n<p>\nNational Poetry Month continues with the Poetically Speaking series over on Miss Print&#8211;today&#8217;s post features fellow <a href=\"https:\/\/missprint.wordpress.com\/?p=16582\" target=\"_blank\">YA author Justina Chen<\/a> interviewing poets Janet S. Wong and Sylvia Vardell about their poetry anthologies. Go forth and be poetic!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since I recently received my very first real-life, official, honest-to-god blurb request, I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about it. Working on it has been&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,91,10,86,52],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-af","tag-poetry-month","tag-views","tag-web-wanderings","tag-writing-daze"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8520,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/8520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}