Latest Writing News, Headlines and Blogs from Writers Write:

J.K. Rowling vs. Airport Security
From: www.writerswrite.com

" J.K. Rowling had a shocking encounter with airport security when she was flying home to London from New York City. Airport security tried to stop her from taking the unfinished, handwritten manuscript of the last Harry Potter book on board the plane as carry-on luggage. But J.K. refused to part with the only copy of the incredibly valuable manuscript. Jo says on her website:

"The heightened security restrictions on the airlines in August made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven (a large part of it is handwritten, and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the US). They let me take it on, thankfully, bound up in elastic bands. I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't; sailed home, probably."

"I am currently trying to decide between two possible titles. I was quite happy with one of them until the other one struck me while I was taking a shower in New York. They would both be appropriate, so I think I'll have to wait until I'm further into the book to decide which one works best."

The Clarion Foundation announced that the venerable Clarion Writers Workshop will move from its longtime home at Michigan State University to the University of California, San Diego, beginning with the 2007 workshop. The move was made because of budget cuts at the state level that have compelled MSU to reduce its support for the workshop, which trains budding science fiction and fantasy writers.

With the move to UCSD, the foundation will be able to target the funds it raises for scholarships. Kim Stanley Robinson, the SF author who has been Clarion's liaison with UCSD, said: "Their offer is for five years, giving the Clarion Foundation full creative control of the program while guaranteeing to pay for all its operating costs. We think that this will give the workshop the long-term stability it needs."

The workshop was founded in 1968 by Robin Scott Wilson at Clarion State College in Clarion, Pa., and is one of the most highly regarded writing workshops in the country. The Clarion Foundation will begin processing applications for its 40th anniversary workshop in January.

The writers-in-residence for the 2007 workshop will be Gregory Frost, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Jeff VanderMeer, Cory Doctorow, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman.

Frazier published "Cold Mountain," his debut novel, in 1997. He was 46. He had quit teaching at a local university to write it, after his wife, Katherine, told him, "You don't want to wake up at 65 and wonder what kind of book you would have written."

*****

While researching "Cold Mountain," Frazier came across a reference to a 90-year-old man in an asylum in Raleigh, N.C., in the late 1800s?a white man named William Holland Thomas, who, for days, spoke nothing but Cherokee. The story became "Thirteen Moons." By April 2002, Frazier had already done some legwork on the book, but knew what he'd written was too woolly to show prospective publishers: "It'd go from a pretty finished scene that was five or 10 pages long, to 10 pages of plant names, to the recipe for yellow-jacket soup." Instead, he wrote a one-page proposal for "Thirteen Moons" before coffee one morning. Random House paid $8.25 million for it, and producer Scott Rudin ponied up $3 million for the movie rights.

Frazier was admonished in some newspapers for leaving the small publisher, Grove Atlantic, that had discovered him, though he's still friends with his former editor. (Grove had bid $6 million in partnership with Vintage paperbacks.) It was not an entirely pleasant time for such a private person, although, sure, there are worse problems a guy could have. "I called my mother after the deal was done and I said, 'There may be some stuff in the papers about this'," says Frazier. "She said, 'Oh, I already know. I saw it on the crawl on CNN'."

Paul Haggis was the toast of Hollywood this year, yet the Oscar-winning screenwriter is still fascinated by the idea that things can go sour at any minute. "Life just keeps kicking your ass," he said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival. "None of us has figured this thing out." Haggis explores that idea in The Last Kiss, which has its world premiere at this year's [Toronto Film] festival.

Based on an Italian movie by director Gabriele Muccino, the film stars Zach Braff (Scrubs) as an expectant father who becomes disillusioned by the idea that there are no more surprises left in his life. "I like the fact that we keep thinking we know that we've got these things figured out," said Haggis, who wrote the screenplay. "We set milestones for ourselves. We say 'At 30, I'll have figured it out'... and then you get to 30 and you go 'Hold on, when is it going to happen?'...and then you get to 35 and 40. I enjoy playing with that."

*****

Since Crash, however - and a guest spot on the TV show Entourage - he's found he has to deal with a new phenomenon: being recognized. "It's a little spooky," he said. "I really like it....It's just a little spooky when it happens." After the festival, he'll be feted in his hometown of London, Ontario. Said Haggis: "I'm going back to every school I was ever kicked out of."

"I had always known that I needed to do something else other than write novels, but there is a terrible Catch-22 about film writing," says Boyd. "You want to write films, but have you ever written a film? But then Channel 4 offered non-film writers such as me, Salman Rushdie and various others the chance. And mine got made and it started from there."

He describes it as a "very good other thing to have going on" and usually has six or seven projects on the go. He clearly enjoys the collaborative aspects of film-making and the people he meets through the industry, but he acknowledges that films are something very different from novels. "You don't go out to see Verdi's Falstaff and then come home and read Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and say: 'My God! Look what he's left out.' "

He is in two minds as to whether his latest novel, Restless, published next month, would make a good film. It is the story of a mother revealing in a series of letters to her daughter that she is not all that she seems to be - that she is not Sally Gilmartin, as widely supposed, but Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian ?migr? co-opted by the British secret services in the run-up to the Second World War. It is a tense drama, tightly plotted and tremendously exciting. "After Any Human Heart [his previous novel, a sprawling 500-page imagined Life], I wanted to do something 'well-carpentered' and the idea of having two women at its heart was an intriguing imaginative exercise," he says.

The report predicts that the traditional TV set will be replaced by a number of "flexible viewing devices".

The development of ultra-thin displays will result in the introduction of video "wallpaper" and tiles that can turn an entire wall into a screen.

Other innovations expected in the next 20 years are video displays on breakfast cereal packets, and screens that can show two different programmes at the same time depending on the angle from which they are viewed.

Internet access will be available through connected displays embedded in magazine pages.