paper trail

Jerry Saltz on channeling stress into creativity; Jordan Kisner’s reading list

Jordan Kisner. Photo: Ebru Yildiz

How to Be an Artist author Jerry Saltz explains how to channel stress into creativity. “Never, ever think about creating something good. Good is boring,” he told the New York Times’s Elisabeth Egan. “Ninety-five percent of what I write is crapola and I just cut it to find the 5 percent that might be worth putting out into the world. You have to open up and pursue that kind of radical vulnerability.”

Thirty thousand people have joined Patreon as creators in the last three weeks.

Jordan Kisner shares what she’s reading during quarantine. “My reading list is filled, for the moment, with books that evoke a sense of place so strong that they make me forget, momentarily, that it’s March and I’m inside.”

For Literary Hub, Kate Dwyer talks to authors and publicists about shifting publicity tours from physical bookstores to online venues and wonders how the change will affect book sales.

The Guardian offers online book club recommendations.

Lorrie Moore talks to the New York Times By the Book column about translations, the ideal reading experience, and her recently published collection of stories. “I am still seeking it as it would involve having nothing else whatsoever to do for days on end,” she said of her preferred reading experience. “It would also involve the ideal pillow and the ideal neck. Also perhaps a contraption that would descend from the ceiling and hold the book at the ideal angle and with the ideal light, while one sips tea as the pages turn when you need them to.”