This Week in Publishing

TWFT is adopting a Friday fixture of many writing blogs: This Week In Publishing. We'll scrounge in the corners of the Internet to bring you the news about writing and publishing that's worth clicking on, in case you missed it.

This Week in Writing:

• A Pixar storyboard artist (who helped create Brave!) gives writers helpful advice in plotting.
• Publishing-industry civilian and former literary agent Nathan Bransford tells us what he thinks of the bare, minimalist modern novel.  Show this to your English teacher who's still stuck on Anna Karenina.
• "Be relentless," Sarah Manguso advises young writers at the Farrar, Straus, and Giroux blog. While we're technically cheating because that article wasn't posted this week, we technically don't care because there are some brilliant pieces of advice in there.
• Literary agent Mary Kole tells us that sometimes, the difficulty of obstacles we set for our characters is too low. And other times, it is too damn high (props if you instantly thought of this meme) (not verbatim! I'm paraphrasing!). Here's how we can make our characters' lives just the right amount of miserable that'll spur them on to succeed.

This Week in Publishing:

• Galley Cat reports that, sadly, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of (Love in the Time of Cholera and 100 Years of Solitude) won't be able to publish any more books due to his dementia. 
• Author Elizabeth Fama tells the internet, "Kill my ARCs." (For those TWFTs who don't know, ARCs = Advance Reader Copies, bound proofs of a book sent out by publishers to reviewers for publicity purposes.)
• While many other journalists are whimpering into their Top Ramen noodle bowls, Malcolm Gladwell has sold his third book, DAVID AND GOLIATH, to Little, Brown. Slated for release in 2013, DAVID AND GOLIATH explores who--the underdog or the sure-fire winner--has the advantage in a competition. 

This Week in Things We're Really Excited About:

• Christopher Nolan was inspired by Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities as he filmed The Dark Knight Rises. His brother and screenwriter-partner, Jonathan Nolan, dishes in an interview. We'd totally see the movie just for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but now it's uh...educational?
• You can sign up for an absolutely-free online writers' conference. NextGen will run from 8/2 to 8/3 and will feature a whole host of working writers. You must be age 19 or younger to attend. This e-conference would be a great place to brush up your basic knowledge of writing and publishing.
• YA Highway is giving away a lot, a lot, a lot of books. Among the selection are ARCs of books written by former TWFTs Kat Zhang and Vahini Naidoo (I've read their work and they're both fantastic). Part of my broke student self thinks that giving away so many books is crazy and another part suspects these bloggers get paid in books or something. (Stacks on stacks on stacks!)
• Starbucks is giving away free Refreshers drinks today from 12PM to 3PM. It's consistently been 102 degrees where I live and I live in a college town...welp. I better line up before 12!

What did I miss? I may have missed a lot because it is about 12 AM and I've been trolling the internet for a while now and I love you readers mucho so please show some love in the comments.
Linda