This Week's Wanna Read: Irritable Hearts by Mac McClelland

When Mac McClelland returns home after witnessing horrifying events in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, she begins to experience strange and disturbing psychological symptoms, among them dissociation, nightmares, and hallucinations. After being diagnosed with PTSD, she researches the disease while trying to heal, traveling the world, and falling in love.

Now that sounds like a story. Read an excerpt of Irritable Hearts here.

Calls for Nonfiction Submissions

Here are the recent calls for nonfiction submissions filtered through New Pages. Check out their excellent site for calls in other genres.

Remember to read some of the work in each publication that interests you. Send the pieces you've worked so hard on to the places where you think they'll be a good fit. Read the submission guidelines very carefully and follow them to the letter.

Latest calls for nonfiction:

Today's Happy WTF But Kind Of Sad Too

I was searching for the correct kanji for the word "sakka," which means writer/artist.( Kanji are Japanese ideograms adopted from Chinese characters.) I clicked on "images," and this was one of the first pictures to pop up:

Kitty!

This is obviously hysterical, and my first reaction was "Kitty!" My second was "Nimoy!" My third was "Nimoy with a kitty!" Pretty awesome pic, even as a kanji search result.

And then I got sad, because he died earlier this year, and I really enjoyed having him on the planet. But I'm happy I have the internet to unexpectedly remind me that we still kind of have him.

Emotional Physicality in Gail Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home

Read this.

This memoir is gorgeous and heartbreaking. Some people define it as a "grief memoir," but I believe it is first and foremost a friendship memoir, as the subtitle states on the cover. That's what I think of when I think of this book.

Caldwell creates such a close emotional connection with the reader that our empathy kicks into high gear. She does this partly by describing her physical response to emotion which invites us into the immediacy, the urgency of the scene.

Near the beginning of her story, Caldwell and her dog are taking a long walk in a park--where she and Caroline Knapp often walked together with their dogs--and is suddenly overwhelmed with grief from the loss of Caroline, her closest friend: “I felt a desolation so great,” she writes, “that for a moment my knees wouldn’t work.” The attachment between her and Caroline has been ripped apart by Caroline's death, and the result is a profound, physical grief.

Non-Writing-Related Coolness: Awesome Mom Helps Alanah Pearce

Some people aren't just fabulous, they're also really smart.

Alanah Pearce, popular video game reviewer, has received ugly rape threats in her comments because--wait for it--she's female. The comments were so disturbing that she wouldn't even repeat them on HuffPost Live, where you can say pretty much anything.

Because she's really smart and these anonymous-posting cowards aren't, she easily tracked them to their Facebook profiles. What she discovered is most of them were just idiot boys posting idiot comments because, I don't know, they're idiots? No self-esteem? Weird-ass peer pressure? They think it's cool? They're sociopaths? Some girl dumped them and this is their twisted revenge? It makes them feel like a big man?

Really, this behavior is so cruel and so messed up that I have a hard time understanding it.

This Week's Wanna Read: On The Move by Oliver Sacks

Easy. Oliver Sacks, guys.

This man knows how to blend precise command of the English language with elegant craft to create beautiful, readable prose. He never talks down or condescends in any way. He weaves medical terminology into his writing, defines it for the layperson, while still respecting the reader's intelligence.

His autobiography, On The Move, was released in April of this year. It's on the back burner because I have so much work to do right now, but I know I'll get to this one.

Four Crucial Differences Between Memoir and Autobiography

Two cats who symbolize the difference
between ... oh whatever. Kitties!

The differences between memoir and autobiography are crucial to the experience of both the writer and reader. Many people, however--including writers--don't understand how they differ in in terms of craft and storytelling technique.

I keep these four ideas in mind as I write my own memoir so I can keep the focus and clean story arc I need. They also help guide me in creating myself as a character on the page.

1. Time Span

An autobiography tells the story of a whole life, whether the writer has lived a long time (Oliver Sacks, Roger Ebert) or not so long (Drew Barrymore). If you want to write an overview of your entire life, including all of the significant events and lessons learned, then you want to write an autobiography.