#terry mcdonell

[vintageanchorbooks]

[therumpus]

People will pay for what they like. The business plan really should be underlined by the idea that whatever platform you’re on, you can be successful if your content is strong. A writer facing that situation has several choices. One choice is to get on as many platforms as they can, and try to become their own brand, thereby allowing them to promote themselves and to pick up additional money in speaking engagements or whatever. You just have to write if you’re going to write and find a way to get on the platforms that are most appropriate for what you’re writing. There are platforms that are good for long-form, and long-form is successful. You just don’t get paid as much for it as you did when those long pieces were only in magazines.

THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW with Terry McDonell.

[whileiamdying]

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Episode 11: “Tomorrow’s Reason”

Shotguns, peacocks, golf, acid. Editor Terry McDonell recounts his 1984 visit, along with George Plimpton, to Hunter S. Thompson’s home in Colorado, including never-before-heard archival tape; a poem by Pablo Neruda, translated by Alastair Reid and read by Antonio Gueudinot; and actor Paul Heesang Miller reads “William Wei,” a short story by Amie Barrodale.

[covertrook]

The one thing I am sure of is that ambition and creativity do not always go together, or we would have more interesting literary magazines and much better journalism.

Terry McDonell

[emberlinsmiscellany]

It’s astonishing how the crossing out of a line, sometimes a phrase, or the substitution of something right for something false can suddenly let light in on an entire chapter.

James Salter, quoted Terry McDonell, in “ SO YOU’VE DECIDED TO WRITE: ON EDITING JAMES SALTER,  “ here. 

[brireadsbooks]

"Sometimes I saw talent everywhere, in everything I read. Other times I thought there was no such thing as a bad idea, just bad execution. This sounds self-serving, but being interested in everything makes you a more effective opportunist--and that's what an editor has to be, a student of unintended consequences."

[92ny]

Happy birthday to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut! 

Legendary editor Terry McDonell tells this great story about how he persuaded him to write for Rolling Stone, after "a few hundred drinks." 

Related: If you enjoyed that, you will LOVE this. Kurt Vonnegut gives his very first public reading of Breakfast of Champions at 92Y in 1970. "This is a world premiere," he said. "Not even my wife has seen it."

[ledgerwritingpodcast]

Most writers were bad negotiators, some even bragging about being bad at business as if that elevated their writing careers to an admirable level of idealism

Terry McDonell, in The Accidental Life, An Editor’s Notes On Writers and Writing.