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Describe your latest book. My novel, The Daylight Marriage, is about a wife and mother who goes missing one day. The narrative alternates between her husband and children's story, as they try to figure out what's happened to her and the story of what is, in fact, happening to her. The husband is a climate [...]

NaNoWriMo participants have less than 24 hours to complete their project. For our final tip, we’re sharing some of our favorite lessons from five established authors who contributed to The Guardian’s “Ten Rules For Writing Fiction” piece.

01. “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” — Elmore Leonard

02. “Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.” — Geoff Dyer

03. “Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.” — Margaret Atwood

04. “Remember you love writing. It wouldn’t be worth it if you didn’t. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back.” — A.L. Kennedy

05. “Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.” — Neil Gaiman

This is our twentieth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. To help GalleyCat readers take on the challenge of writing a draft for a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, we will be offering advice throughout the entire month.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Describe your latest book/project/work. Another Great Day at Sea is an account of my experiences aboard the USS George H. W. Bush. It's a masterpiece of the form, widely hailed as the best book ever written about my time on the George H. W. Bush. Also, I have two early novels, The Colour of Memory [...]

Have you ever loved a film so much that you wanted to write a book about it? Author Geoff Dyer just published Zona: A Book about a Film about a Journey to a Room, an entire book dedicated to Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Stalker is a spooky film about three men traveling through a magical wasteland, a trip loaded with enough great writing, surreal imagery and existential philosophy to inspire you to write your own book. On Sunday, we will host an online viewing of Stalker with a crew of intrepid writers–posting thoughts, reactions and Dyer quotes on Twitter.

We’d love to have you join us for the online viewing. Simply start watching the movie in whatever format you prefer at 8 p.m. EST on March 11th. Thanks to a Russian film distributor, the entire film is available online for free–simply follow the YouTube links embedded below. As you watch the film, add your thoughts on Twitter with the #StalkerSunday hashtag.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Haven't yet picked up a box of chocolates or a dozen roses. Here are some Valentine's Day suggestions for the special bookish person in your life.

Haven't yet picked up a box of chocolates or a dozen roses. Here are some Valentine's Day suggestions for the special bookish person in your life.

Geoff Dyer‘s brilliant But Beautiful explored jazz history with novelistic flourishes, giving readers an invaluable jazz education in the process. Check out our new But Beautiful playlist on Spotify and listen to more than four hours of classic jazz albums handpicked by Dyer.

Here’s more about the great trumpet player and vocalist Chet Baker, from the book (all songs listed below): “Put them all together and they were like a book, a dream guide to the heart: ‘I Can’t Believe You’re in Love with Me,’ ‘The Way You Look Tonight,’ ‘You Go to my Head,’ ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily,’ ‘There Will Never Be Another You.’ It was all there, all the novels in the world wouldn’t tell you more about men and women and the moments flashing like stars between them.”

Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service. Once you have an account, check out our Haruki Murakami Spotify playlist, our Patti Smith Spotify playlist, our Lev Grossman Spotify playlist and our new Geoff Dyer Spotify playlist.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Daily Beast asked some writers — Donna Tartt, Junot Díaz, Chris Adrian, Geoff Dyer, Karen Russell, Sherman Alexie, Siri Hustvedt, Darin Strauss, Téa Obreht, Kathryn Stockett, Alexandra Fuller, Anne Enright, Elisabeth Kostova, Alexander McCall Smith, and me — about our favorite summer books.

Mine is John Colapinto’s first (and, so far, only) novel, About the Author. What I said:

I read John Colapinto’s hilarious, propulsive, and gorgeously written About the Author in a single day almost exactly eight years ago, before the rise, demise, and resurrection of James Frey, when I knew next to nothing about publishing but had great expertise in planning to write and not writing. The novel’s narrator, Cal Cunningham, has also perfected this skill. A supposed wordsmith, he spends his days shelving books at a big midtown bookstore, nights going from bar to bar picking up girls and getting laid, and Sunday mornings filling his dull law student roommate in on his escapades. Our hero’s sense of superiority is shattered when he discovers that the roommate hasn’t been locked in his room typing tedious legal briefs but working on a novel, one that’s actually good, one that sounds suspiciously like Cunningham’s own life, so much so that when the roommate dies unexpectedly… Well, I’ve already said too much, but it’s a remarkable book, a confessional literary thriller that makes you care about its plagiarist narrator even as it reveals him to be a coward and a liar and satirizes the publishing and media world that exalts him.

I’ve been blogging so long, I can point exactly to when I first read About the Author, a gift from Emma early in our friendship. (I didn’t know then that the novel took Colapinto thirteen years to write. No judgment here.)

Head over to the Daily Beast for the other picks.

“I never cease to be astonished by his insight, his freshness, his brevity (deep problems treated like cold baths: in and out as quickly as possible)…” Geoff Dyer praises the inexhaustible Friedrich Nietzsche.