A Little Help

Professional Resources for Writers and Artists, Offered by Friends and Colleagues

Most artists, unless they’re patronized by a Medici or the beneficiary of inherited wealth, need day jobs or side hustles. One that at least superficially seems related to your true vocation is teaching others how to do that thing. So inevitably I have a number of friends and colleagues who teach—some, like me, under the auspices of universities and colleges, others independently. I thought I would do them—and perhaps, you, reader, if you are an aspiring writer or artist yourself—the favor of publishing a quick roundup of the various courses, tutorials, and editing or consulting services they offer.

Writing/Editing

• First up, because the application deadline is closest: my friend Myla Goldberg, author of acclaimed novels like Bee Season and Feast Your Eyes, is offering a four-week workshop via Zoom, concentrating on revision. As she describes it: “We’ll discuss each week’s submissions with an eye for the makings of strong plots, memorable characters, and strategies for creating and sustaining narrative momentum.” NOTE: deadline for application is this Monday, May 11th. (Sorry to cut it so close; that’s my fault, not Myla’s.) It’s on Mondays, May 25 - June 15, 7:00 - 9:00 pm EST. It’s $400 for the course. To apply, send a 10-15 page writing sample to: myla@mylagoldberg.com.

• My editor at The New York Times, Peter Catapano—whom I would trust, if necessary, to edit and publish my work sight unseen—occasionally runs classes and workshops for writers at various stages of their careers and projects, and more rarely will work one-on-one with a writers on short-term projects. If you’d like to be on his mailing list for upcoming classes and such, send him a note at: thepointlessinvestigations@gmail.com

• My first editor at Simon & Schuster and unofficial editor-for-life, Amber Qureshi, now does freelance editing. In addition to my first essay collection, We Learn Nothing, Amber edited Arvin Adiga’s Man Booker Prizewinning novel The White Tiger and has worked with authors like Haruki Murakami, Michel Houllebecq, and Leslie Jamison. I watched Amber physically cut up one of my essays and lay it out, paragraph by paragraph, on a picnic table and rearrange it to solve some structural problems; we once sat in a bar and determinedly drank tequila until the true subject of another stalled essay was forced to reveal itself. She’s taught at various prestigious universities and writer’s conferences, and now takes on freelance editing, ghostwriting, and translation work (sh’s fluent in French and Japanese) when her schedule permits. She can be reached at: ambertangerine@gmail.com.

• My second editor at S&S, Molly Pisani, who elegantly finished editing We Learn Nothing, making it look as though I’d meant to do that, is also now freelancing. You can contact her at: starsplittereditorial@gmail.com

Cartooning

• My friend and former cartooning colleague Tom Hart, author of the devastating but beautiful memoir Rosalie Lightning, runs a cartooning school, the Sequential Artists Workshop, which offers lots of online courses, ranging from long intensives (6-12 months) to 4-week classes. (There’s also still a real-world, brick-and-mortar school in Gainesville, Florida, run by Tom’s colleague Carly Shooster.)

• Also through The Sequential Artists Workshop, my friend Jess Rullifson, a cartoonist who’s adapted the stories of veterans into the graphic memoir Invisible Wounds, does one-hour consults for people looking to make their own original comics or to adapt prose/journalism/research into comics. A portion of the proceeds go to keep SAW running; Jess uses the rest to support a “life of dissipation.”

Writing and drawing may be solitary arts, but very few people really do them entirely alone. Even Thoreau’s mom brought him lunch. I owe much of my own career, such as it is, to some of the people above. They’re all brilliant and accomplished editors or artists in their own right, and all insightful, articulate, generous and hardassed teachers. Any aspiring writer or artist would be fortunate to avail themselves of their expertise. Turning your half-formed ideas and middle-of-the-night inspirations into publishable work is unavoidably a slog, but their company and counsel will make the way clearer, and the path more bearable.