If you’re fortunate enough to have been one of my victims over the past few months, you’ll already be aware that I’ve been occupying my time with an incessant rampage of recommending All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews to anything with eyeballs and a pulse. Every now and then, I’ll read a book so … Continue reading On McSweeney’s Publishing, The Genius of Miriam Toews and Jonathan Plombon, and The Use of Humor as a Gateway into Difficult Subject Matter
Perfume
Last semester, I took a class on the forgotten literary art of the epistolary. To drive home exactly how forgotten this art form is, I had to look up what epistolary meant. But hey, I thought, I write letters! I don’t usually send them, but if I’m interested in writing them, I should take a … Continue reading Perfume
Writing for Non-Writers: or How to Free-Write Free Will
There is a common misconception that a writer is a particular sort of person. That being a writer is something you’re born into, that someone either can write or can’t. There also is a second common misconception: the idea that people have to want to read what you write for it to be “good.” Given … Continue reading Writing for Non-Writers: or How to Free-Write Free Will
All We Need is a Writer Who Writes
There are points in a writer’s life when the creative juices are not flowing. The juices have hit a block, a wall, and they say to the writer, “let us not be productive today.” The writer complies, justifying the lack of output by thinking that motivation will come later. Then the writer gets the idea … Continue reading All We Need is a Writer Who Writes
The Written Advantage
Why even bother? That’s a question perhaps worth asking of the written word. We have movies, we have television, we have videogames. Why go to the trouble of reading at all? It’s a lot more effort, with a lot less—well—production value. Movies are single, big, events. Explosions (literal and figurative) and grandiosity galore. Television shows … Continue reading The Written Advantage
The Faceless Artist
Who is the artist behind this piece? Is the individual male or female? What ethnicity? If we were to imagine that individual’s story, what might it be? How would their tale unfold? Regardless of the artist you’ve envisioned, it’s important to consider how our conception of an artist comes into formation. If I told you … Continue reading The Faceless Artist
Ego-Less Writing
A writer, above all other professionals, ought to be self-aware. Nothing is more detestable than writing that is hypocritical. To prevent hypocrisy, a writer ought to walk the talk. She ought to wield truth like a sword and hack away at herself—especially at those parts of herself that would inspire ridicule in any reasonable reader. … Continue reading Ego-Less Writing
What Bathos Can Do for Your Short Fiction
We all know the drill: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action. This is the formula for basic stories and a successful plot line, proven to be effective and hard to stray from as a writer. And yet, in attempting a climactic moment, writers often get stuck in the mires of melodrama, falling prey to contrivances … Continue reading What Bathos Can Do for Your Short Fiction
Lessons on the Power of Concision from Yasunari Kawabata
In judging this year’s flash fiction contest entries, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Yasunari Kawabata, a master of the form. Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese writer who, in 1968, became the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. While he is likely better known for his novels, such as Snow … Continue reading Lessons on the Power of Concision from Yasunari Kawabata
How to Pretend to Have Read Books Without Really Trying
Like most college students—and like all who wear lens-less glasses—I entered freshmen year entirely assured I was uniquely well-read. My first year taught me three important things (in addition to imparting on me the wisdom that lens-less glasses picked me out as uniquely unlikeable): First, my taste in books was not unique (however at the … Continue reading How to Pretend to Have Read Books Without Really Trying
