Electric Speed is a free newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane My mom has smoked all her life, and I’ve always hated the habit. As a kid I used to plead with her to stop and even hid her cigarettes on one occasion. (That did not end well.) Over time, I stopped begrudging her the habit. In fact, during those rare moments when she tried to stop, I felt anxious. She didn’t engage in...
19 days ago • 7 min read
Electric Speed is a free newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane What changes in publishing have surprised me? And what hasn’t surprised me? That was one of several great questions asked at my book launch event at the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati last week. Like most people, I vividly remember what I get wrong. So it was easy to talk about that. In the early 2010s, I believed...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Electric Speed is a free newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane For years I’ve hung onto the following quote from a Paul Graham essay: “If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Electric Speed is a free newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane Recently I read an article about why friend breakups hurt so much. In a nutshell: They are a kind of unrecognized grief. That article has been on my mind after a sort-of-similar breakup: My husband and I left our personal trainer of three years to join another gym. It’s not a change we planned on. We weren’t looking for...
2 months ago • 6 min read
Electric Speed is a free newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane Every time I make a significant change to my business, there will be someone who reaches out to tell me that I am making a mistake. They aren’t lodging a complaint, but rather expressing concern. It’s tempting to think there is a gendered aspect to this, and maybe there is, but what I see underneath is more interesting...
3 months ago • 6 min read
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane Last weekend, for the first time in 18 months, I went to the cinema. I was inspired after reading a New Yorker profile of director Brady Corbet, whose film The Brutalist is nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He is described as “a budding American auteur, precise and uncompromising in his artistic vision,...
3 months ago • 6 min read
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane For the last six months, I’ve been preparing for the launch of the second edition of The Business of Being a Writer. A friend asked me if that was particularly challenging right now, because of the politically charged social media environment and growing distrust of big-tech platforms. In fact, none of that has had...
3 months ago • 7 min read
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane Those who follow the business of book publishing—what’s selling, what’s not—probably know that fiction has been reigning over the bestseller lists for a while now. Last year, of the top 10 bestselling new releases, only one was a nonfiction book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. There’s ongoing concern...
4 months ago • 5 min read
Electric Speed is a biweekly newsletter that shares resources for creative people (since 2009!), brought to you by Jane Friedman. | View in browser | Sign up here A note from Jane I don’t make New Year’s resolutions per se, but once every few years, I’ll come across a quote so pithy and tremendously needed, I write it down and stick it to my computer monitor. Coincidentally I ran across this one a couple weeks ago: “When someone tries to provoke you, don’t be provoked. When someone isn’t even...
4 months ago • 6 min read