This is certainly not the first or even the most dramatic revelation of questioned work — remember James Frey? Margaret Selzer? Herman Rosenblat? to name just a few — but it comes at a time when publishing is at a precarious spot in its industry’s history. As novelist Kurt Andersen told the Times: “If book publishers are supposed to be the gatekeepers, tell me exactly what they’re closing the gate to.”

Amid the struggle to get published, my fellow writers and I end up talking a lot about self-publishing, which usually has been viewed as the only option for writers who aren’t “good enough” to find a “real” publisher. Yet many writers are choosing to self-publish these days — and it’s not because they’re not good enough (Steve Almond is certainly good enough – check out his story in this LA Times piece) or because they won’t be able to sell enough books (we all know John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, can sell books, and Publishers Marketplace recently announced that he is self-publishing his latest, Venus On Fire, Mars On Ice). They’re choosing it for other reasons, among them making more money, having more control over the process, and, as Steve Almond puts it: “No marketing plan, no guilt-inducing advance, no royalty statements, no remainders.”

This is not to say that, just because another questionable nonfiction book has slipped through the cracks, we should abandon the publishing world and do it all ourselves — not at all. Self-publishing, of course, is not for everyone — having no marketing plan, for example, is only a good option for someone who already has an audience or has a great deal of experience in book marketing — and in general, having gatekeepers is necessary and good. But for those with great books that can’t sell in today’s market, it’s good to have other options, and slipping under the gate might not be such a bad idea.

One of the most interesting things about Patterson’s article is a conversation she had with her father, who brought up an event that he said he wished “had gone better,” to which Patterson replied, “Dad, that never happened. It’s fiction. I made it up.” Which is another challenge of autobiographical fiction: If people recognize parts of the story as true, they may well believe it’s all true.

I’m often asked about how much of what happens in the stories of Forgetting English actually happened in real life. Last week, when this came up at a book club I was visiting, we joked about how they all might want to lock up their jewelry (and their husbands) … but the truth is (quite boringly) that Forgetting English isn’t autobiographical — at least not in the strict sense. Every story contains bits and pieces of my life — some more than others; “The Road to Hana,” for example, was inspired by a real stolen ring, even if I wasn’t the one to steal it — but these pieces are not necessarily reenactments of my own experiences.

In a reading I gave last week at a local college, I was asked about “The Ecstatic Cry,” the Forgetting English story about a scientist living in Antarctica — a character about as opposite of me as one could imagine, in that I hate the cold and barely passed most of my science courses. Yet I acknowledged that this character — a loner who spends as much time as she can at the bottom of the world, who cares more for animals than for humans — does reflect a concerned (and rather cranky) part of myself, a part that wishes we all treated animals and the planet a little better. And while in my everyday life, I express this part of myself in small ways by volunteering and supporting organizations with similar goals, I enjoyed giving it a voice and a life of its own.

If you’re writing purely autobiographical fiction, then you already know about the questions that will await you. And even if you’re not, those same questions will still await you. This is because readers know as well as we do that nothing is ever entirely fictional — even if we did make it all up.

The article outlines who gets what slices of the hardcover and e-book pies — money goes toward not only paying authors but to copyediting, design, marketing, printing, storage, shipping, and, for e-books, converting to and typesetting in digital format. After all the math is worked out, the e-book emerges as slightly more profitable.

But as the article notes, “e-books still represent a small sliver of total sales, from 3 to 5 percent. If e-book sales start to replace some hardcover sales, the publishers say, they will still have many of the fixed costs associated with print editions, like warehouse space, but they will be spread among fewer print copies. Moreover, in the current print model, publishers can recoup many of their costs, and start to make higher profits, on paperback editions. If publishers start a new e-book’s life at a price similar to that of a paperback book, and reduce the price later, it may be more difficult to cover costs and support new authors.”

Another worry, of course, is that bookstores will be unable to compete: “As more consumers buy electronic readers and become comfortable with reading digitally, if the e-books are priced much lower than the print editions, no one but the aficionados and collectors will want to buy paper books.”

Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, a consultant to publishers, believes that publishers need to go into e-books slowly to avoid this happening: “The simplest way to slow down e-books is not to make them too cheap.”

Many authors remain concerned about what e-books will do to the industry, but I like what Anne Rice had to say to the Times about it: “The only thing I think is a mistake is people trying to hold back e-books or Kindle and trying to head off this revolution by building a dam. It’s not going to work.”

And I’ve been following William Boot’s “Do I Have To Read…?” series for the Daily Beast on reviewing commercial books. In Boot’s opinion, only 44 of the 279 pages of Elizabeth Gilberts’s new book, Committed, are readable. The number of readable pages in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help? “All of them.”

As I schedule new events and classes, I’ve found a handy resource in Teach Street. Whether you’re a student of writing or a teacher of writing (or of anything else, for that matter), check it out, if you haven’t already. It’s a great way for students to find classes and for instructors to list classes.

If you’re into publishing news and you’re also on Twitter, you might get a kick out of following FakeBookNews, satirical tweets about publishing and literary culture. Among the stories: “Success of bestselling novel leads to blog deal for author” and “Michiko Kakutani gives up using ‘fierce,’ ‘limn’ and ‘deeply felt’ for Lent.” (Note: Click here for a non-satirical piece on going from blog to book.)

“Can writing be taught?” asks this Atlantic piece, which offers advice on writing from Wallace Stegner, Francine Prose, Gail Godwin, and others. John Kenneth Galbraith, while acknowledging that the difficulty of writing is enough to drive any writer to drink, nevertheless advises staying away from booze: “Any writer who wants to do his best against a deadline should stick to Coca-Cola. If he doesn’t have a deadline, he can risk Seven-Up.”

And finally, for anyone who’s ever thought about using a pen name, check out this blog post from literary agent Nathan Bransford. (Important: Deal with the pen name after you’ve found your agent: “When I receive your query,” Bransford writes, “I don’t want it to be from your pseudonym.”) The post has an interesting list of pros and cons, especially tuned in to the Internet age, and includes reasons I’d never really thought of — for example, if you have a very common name, like Jane Smith, you might consider a pen name for search engine optimization (of course, with a name like Midge, you can see why I’ve never thought of this).

Enjoy.

Among the friends at this year’s SCWC were Clare Meeker, who presented on creating commissioned stories (she’s in San Diego all week promoting her book Charge Ahead, commissioned by KPBS public television in San Diego as part of a national “Raising Readers” grant to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from the U.S. Department of Education). Among the gems of Clare’s presentation were reminders that a writer always needs to be thinking outside the box, and not to take no for an answer: an editor who once told Clare that they only used in-house writers later published two of Clare’s books.

During the banquet I got to catch up with Judy Reeves, whose A Writer’s Book of Days will be reissued this fall; keep an eye out for that, even if you already have a copy  — the new edition will have all new prompts and literary quotes. I also had the pleasure of sitting with Tammy Greenwood, whose new novel, The Hungry Season, was published in January. She gave an inspiring keynote that evening, as well as a great session the next morning on creating substantive characters.

I always enjoy the agent/editor panel, and this year, I felt a bit more optimism about publishing in the air. The panel talked about book promotion, making a few important points, among them: Writing and selling a book is half the process, while promotion is the other half; there’s less and less money available for in-house publicity, so this job is falling more and more to authors; authors must be creative with marketing and/or save some of their advance dollars to put toward hiring a publicist.

They also talked about e-formats, and none had any violent thoughts on the subject, which indicates that the non-retail part of industry is becoming more accepting. One editor noted that the e-formats do not affect print runs at her publishing company — they do the same print run they’d do with or without e-books, and adding e-formats only increases readership beyond what they’d be seeing with traditional paper books.

In response to a question from the audience, the panel addressed self-publishing, noting that they don’t normally take on self-published books (the average sales for a self-published book is about 100 copies), but that their interest is piqued whenever a self-published book sells 2,500 copies or more.

And of course, members of the panel talked about their pet peeves — and I always think this is worth noting in detail. The list seems to be the same year after year, but apparently this is because writers are making the same mistakes year after year. So take note: among the most common submission mistakes to avoid are…

- approaching an agent or editor the way he/she does not want to be approached (calling when guidelines specify email contact only, for example)

- sending material the agent doesn’t represent or the editor doesn’t publish

- sending work that has not been edited or proofread

- sending work that is too long (noted one agent: “Anything over 100,000 words is a red flag — it’s hard to sell anything over 90,000 words”)

- sending emails to multiple agents at the same time

- misspelled words in a query letter (including — and especially — misspelling the word query)

- telling agents or editors that they’re going to “miss out” or that the book is “a guaranteed bestseller”

- writing, “here is my fictional novel”

- forsaking professional writing when using email – queries should still be written professionally

Overall, the conference was informative and also inspiring. One of the best things about this conference is that because it’s in February, it’s still early enough to make good on the new year’s writing resolutions. So now, back to work…

I am the co-owner of a Kindle; I probably wouldn’t have bought one on my own, but my husband is a geek (though he prefers the term “early adopter”) and got one right away. It’s mostly his, and I’ve only used it a couple of times … until this week, when I brought it with me on a solo trip. And I have to admit, the Kindle makes an awesome travel companion.

Given all the airline restrictions and baggage fees, I wanted to travel as lightly as possible, which for a writer isn’t always easy (notebooks, laptop, books, etc.). But instead of carrying three or four books with me, I downloaded a few books onto the Kindle — books I’ve been wanting to read but didn’t yet own in physical form. And so I had all my reading material in one lightweight, slender place.

Well, almost all my reading material. I did bring a couple of magazines with me because Kindles are among the devices that must be put away during takeoff and landing.

Among the things I appreciate about the Kindle are: being able to enlarge type size so that I don’t have to dig through and/or haul my bag out of the overhead bin looking for my glasses, which are likely in my checked baggage anyway; being able to read one story, flip to another collection or anthology to read another, then return to the first, all without doing the aforementioned digging around; being able to look up a word at the click of a button; being able to buy a new book at the click of a button.

Spending some quality time with this e-reader made me glad that Forgetting English is available on the Kindle. Many writers would still prefer that their books be available only in traditional form — but I think this is changing. While I still believe that those who love traditional books will continue to buy them — I’d have bought the books I’m reading now in paperback if I hadn’t had a Kindle for this trip — I’m hearing of more and more readers who read exclusively on the Kindle these days. And once I saw how easy it is to download a book — within moments, it appears in your library — I was glad to know that my own book is available at the click of a button. Yes, it’s cheaper and we all make a bit less money — but given the choice, I’d rather have fewer dollars than fewer readers.

But I do remember taking both computer and typing classes (on actual typewriters). And these days, nothing makes you feel quite as old as admitting you used to write by typewriter. Sometimes, when I’m in the Seattle Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, I hear people younger than me wondering what this odd sculpture is:

(Note to young people: It’s a typewriter eraser. We use to employ these to get rid of typos before we had backspace buttons and the delete key.)

Eventually, the keyboard took the place of the pen and the notebook in my academic life, and even in my writing life. But not for long: I always continued to write by hand, whether taking notes during an interview or scrawling out an outline. And now I use some combination of the two.

Many writers are particular, even superstitious, about the way they get their words on the page. I enjoyed discovering this site featuring Authors A-Z, “an ongoing project featuring the lives, works, and typewriters of the most outstanding authors around the world.” Here, you’ll find out that Harper Lee wrote on an Underwood portable. That Joseph Heller used an SCM Smith Corona Electra. That even Joyce Carol Oates has rejected the computer: She writes in longhand, then types her notes into scenes using “a Japanese made Swintec 1000 electronic typewriter with ‘a little memory’ but no screen.”

And if you’re interested in owning a piece of these antiques, here’s even an (expensive) online store where you can browse old typewriters and jewelry made of their keys. (Check out eBay and flea markets, too.) Over the last few years, my husband and I have been picking up typewriters here and there (we have three Underwoods and and have recently added a Remington), and will probably keep adding to the collection, at least until we run out of space. Only one of ours is in any sort of working condition, but that’s not why we bought them. Even bent and broken, with sticky keys and dried-out ribbon, we think they’re pretty cool — maybe because they always look as if they’re smiling.

But on Sunday, as the New York Times reports, Amazon agreed to Macmillan’s terms, though not at all happily: “‘We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles,’ Amazon said [on its web site]. ‘We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.’”

Apple’s new iPad has set the stage for giving publishers the upper hand again, by allowing them to sell books in its iBookstore at their own prices, and it looks as if this is having a ripple effect. Under Macmillan’s new terms, reports the Times, the publisher will serve as an agent, taking a 30 percent commission and setting e-books at prices between $12.99 to $14.99. The Macmillian arrangement will happen in March, around the time the iPad tablet hits the stores.

Check it out here.

So here are two exercises for you to do after you’ve checked out the photos:

1) Open your fridge. Take a photo. Write about what you see: why it’s there, what you’d like to be different, what it says about you, and anything else you can think of.

2) Choose a photo from Menjivar’s project — but avoid reading his description of the fridge’s owner. Instead, make up a character based on what you see in his/her fridge, including backstory, relationships, work, passions, the whole thing.

Enjoy.