Great Writers' Rules of Writing: Vonnegut Has 8

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Vonnegut adds that American short story writer, Flannery O'Connor, broke all these rules except the first.

-- Vonnegut, Kurt Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction , pp. 9-10(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999).

Wal-Mart Is Cutting 40% Magazines From Racks ( With 01/18/08 Update)

From Meg Weaver at Wooden Horse Magazine:

"WalMart, the chain that accounts for as much as 40% of many consumer magazine's single copy sales, has just released a new authorized list of magazine titles. It seems WalMart has decided to cut back on the number of magazines they will distribute. The exact numbers of titles involved are still not available but rumor has it that the list has been cut from roughly 3,000 titles to about 1,100...."

Surfing just now, I couldn't locate any new WalMart list of authorized titles, either.

JANUARY 18, 2008 UPDATE: This past Tuesday, Wal-Mart apparently released a list of 1000 magazine titles that it is purging from its shelves; however, I have been unable to find the actual list online. All sources seem to go back to one lone story in the New York Post, written by Keith Kelly, referencing the list and reporting the purge includes such big name titles as Better Homes & Gardens, The New Yorker, The Economist, Business Week, Forbes, and Fortune.

Lawyer Writer News Flash: Freelance Writers' Settlement Screwed

The settlement has been nixed by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a 2-1 decision, and now the Freelance Writers case, which argued that that freelance contracts do not allow for electronic publication (online, in databases) unless it's specifically stated, is back in the frying pan.

It's a 2-year-old settlement, with around $20 million at issue, and a Who's Who of Publishers as defendants: Knight Ridder Inc., Reuters, West Publishing, etc.

There are several well-known plaintiffs, as well: EL Doctorow, Gerald Posner, the National Writers Union, the Authors' Guild, the American Society of Journalists & Authors, etc.

And the basis for this? Jurisdiction.

Yep. The appellate court has found that the district court lacked federal jurisdiction to approve the settlement in this copyright infringement case. (Well, two justices did -- the dissenting judge said he wouldn't nix this settlement on jurisdictional grounds.) The majority opinion:

"The overwhelming majority of claims within the certified class arise from the infringement of unregistered copyrights ....We have held, albeit outside the class-action context, that district courts lack statutory subject matter jurisdiction over infringement claims arising from unregistered copyrights."

Read the opinion here.

So what happens now? Well, I'm betting that the Freelance Writers' counsel request a full-court review of this 3-justice panel decision - which may or may not get granted. After that, the Supreme Court is the next step, procedurally - and while it's very difficult to get heard by the Highest of the High Courts, they did hear Tasini ....