Ten rules for writing fiction Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin 1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. 2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. 3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. 5 Keep your exclamation points under control. 6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". 7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. 9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. 10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Diana Athill Margaret Atwood 1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes.
Jessica Nielsen R.J. Cutler: What I Learned From Anna Wintour For eight months, from January to August of 2007, I filmed with Anna Wintour and her team at Vogue as they created the September 2007 issue of the magazine. Known throughout the fashion industry (with and without irony) as The Bible, this particular issue was 840 pages long and weighed in at just under five pounds. Now safely identified as a relic from another era (oh how long ago that was), this particular edition of Vogue turned out to be the single largest issue of a magazine that has ever been published. During those eight months, my crew and I shot over three hundred hours of footage, the result of which is the feature documentary The September Issue, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and has grossed more than $8-million in theaters around the world. This coming Tuesday, February 23, the DVD of the film, along with a separate DVD's-worth of deleted scenes and other goodies, will be released. What is her secret? Lesson 1: Keep Meetings Short Lesson 4: Don't Look Back
minimega design London Fashion Week AW 2010 – New Digital Era Spells Trouble for The world of fashion writing is changing. Like all forms of media of late, fashion, in particular, has seen a huge surge in the numbers of both skilled and unskilled practitioners making and developing their own niche or mainstream fashion blogs. At the opening day of London Fashion Week yesterday, I witnessed at first hand the remarkable task that this seemingly unstoppable rise in the numbers of entry-level fashion journalists has posed those involved in fashion PR, namely: who is who among the bloggers; and how to stop those who aren’t from invading our press rooms, and eating all the food. After Sarah Brown spoke following the opening catwalk of LFW AW 2010, there was a battle to the press room not seen since my last visit to a rugby international where understandably bulky former-players-turned-mouthpiece’s-of-the-sport jostled light-heartedly for free drinks after the event. For now, how about “only those in Google News allowed.”
Shop cute korean stationery, accessories, scrapbooking, craft, gift Victoria's secret When Plum Sykes was a little girl, she dreamed of growing up to be a princess and a journalist. Being a clever sort, she grew up to be both. As Anna Wintour's star fashion writer for the past eight years at American Vogue, the glossiest of the glossies, she has also become a fixture on the Manhattan social scene - a princess in the modern sense. (Somewhat less predictably, she also harboured a brief childhood dream of becoming "a merchant banker, can you believe it?" But, hey, it was the 1980s.) Sykes, who is 34, moved to New York from her native Britain in 1996, and has been charting the lives of Manhattan's upper classes, its Park Avenue Princesses, or PAPs, to use Sykes's phrase, ever since. Quite how outside this world Sykes really is is debatable. Affectionate it may be, but Sykes is sharp enough to have identified the New York socialite's obsession with marrying well, with money, and a complete lack of interest in having a job. But no matter.
Lotta Kühlhorn Google Reader (145) Why I hate fashion | Tanya Gold A confession – it's been stalking me for years now, this crawling disdain for fashion; the certainty that it is not an ally but an enemy. The older I am, the more disenchanted I am with what is meant to make us beautiful. Now, at 36, I believe it is one of the ultimate evils in the universe, along with yoghurt. Put simply, I hate fashion. You may say that I am bitter. Not at all. I decided to write this piece late last year, when I read that a 16-year-old girl wearing high-heeled shoes had fallen between the carriages of a train in West Sussex. Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City 'worshipped shoes instead of a god'. This was different from the usual Fashion Death, where a model has a heart attack on the catwalk, because she lives on grapes. I thought about that young woman for days; I couldn't forget her. Can't you ignore it, you may ask? I discovered fashion when I was 13. And so I dressed, like all schoolgirls in 1987, in approximate homage to the cast of Neighbours.
A Tribute to Eunice Johnson Many of you will know this great Lady and some of you may not. Eunice Johnson was the creator, along with her husband, of Ebony Magazine. She died on January 3, 2010 at the age of 93 years old. The Johnson Publishing company in Chicago has other titles on its roster like Jet, but Ebony was the jewel in their publishing crown. What is extraordinary is its longevity and the fact that there was no other publishing company owned by an African-American with its breadth and influence. In short, Eunice Johnson was a living legend. The magazine was a staple in my house growing up. ly on that her early years were spent in a segregated United States where everything was divided between White and Black. As I grew older, I saw the magazine as marginal and felt that it didn't satisfy my growing appetite for the "best and latest" of what was in the larger world. math) and decided that if my Mother liked it, it had to be uncool. New York: Blass, Oscar, Mary McFadden, you name it. g week.
Garance Dore Garance Doré is possibly the fashion world’s most closely followed blogger. Her site, Une Fille Comme Moi (“A girl like me,” which can be found at garancedore.fr) clocks an average of 50,000 hits per day. A recent uploaded picture of a pair of tawny Vivienne Westwood multistrap pirate boots generated more than 225 comments; if they weren’t a cult item before, they certainly are now. “Garance is our daily bread,” remarked one French fashion editor who preferred to remain anonymous. Doré’s mix of portrait photography, illustrations, collages, and stream-of-consciousness writing—whether she’s waxing on the conflicting pull of “simplicity and flats” versus “dizzying thigh-high boots” (the latter worn in the manner of French Vogue’s Emmanuelle Alt) or the pleasure of eating two cupcakes after a day of greens—has given the fashion world en masse a girl crush. Doré originally hails from Corsica. REBECCA VOIGHT: The spring collections just ended in Paris. DORÉ: Not really.