The Weird Week in Writing: Clive Owen as Hemingway, turning your iPad into a typewriter, and Oprah’s magazine marvel

Freaky Friday—the latest from the weird and wonderful world of
writing this week (followed, as always, by a prompt):

The Wired Luddite: Turn your $600 iPad into a typewriter for $400.

Playing Papa: Clive Owen = Hemingway? Owen is slated to play the legendary scribe in HBO’s new film about Hemingway's relationship with writer Martha Gellhorn. (Who would you cast? I might Mickey Rourke it.)

The Bloomsday that was: This week the world celebrated the epic day featured in James Joyce’s Ulysses. (Last year, two fans even created 54 Twitter accounts for the novel’s main characters and tweeted a chapter of their lines in order.)

"I wish to assure our American friends that, for this performance, the England team will in fact be executed.” Which writer is tweeting the World Cup?

And who says print is dead?Not Oprah: She celebrated the 10th anniversary of O, The Oprah Magazine by giving everyone on staff an iPad and $10,000.

''We are not dealing with Penguin books”: Using his “thief’s shopping list,” a man allegedly stole tens of thousands of dollars worth of rare books in London.

Spawn spawns legal battle: Writer Neil Gaiman V. artist Todd McFarlane. Comics hit the courts.

(Image: Via)

* * *

WRITING PROMPT: The Dead Pool (Thanks to WD Online Community Ed. Brian A. Klems)
Feel

free to take the following prompt home or post a
response (500
words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring) in the Comments section below.
By posting, you’ll be automatically entered in our
occasional around-the-office swag drawings.
If
you’re having trouble with the
captcha code sticking, e-mail your piece and the prompt to me at
writersdigest@fwmedia.com, with “Promptly” in the subject line, and I’ll
make sure it gets up.

You and a friend break into your neighborhood swim club late one night
to go for an after-hours dip. As you splash around in the pool, a body floats to the top—and it's someone
you know. Write this scene.

--

The Top 101 Websites for Writers. An entire feature package on genres, from
romance to YA to blended forms. An interview with Bird by Bird scribe
Anne Lamott. How to write from anywhere. Click

here to check the May/June 2010 issue of WD out before the next issue
debuts.

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