Columns

When it's Okay to be Uncertain

May 1st, 2018

At some point, you have probably heard the advice that if you’re to be a true writer, you have to know your characters entirely—that if you are creating a well-defined character you should be able to fully articulate what is under their fictional bed. I’m not sure if I believe this.

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A Very Personal Chuck Palahniuk Retrospective

April 30th, 2018

photo by Allan Amato This is a retrospective, a going-through of Chuck Palahniuk’s work. Because his new book comes out this week. I’m not going to talk plots or reviews so much as I'll tell some personal stories. If you’re looking for a plot summary, just buy the damn books and read them already. If you're looking for reviews, there's lots out there for you.  If you're looking to hear how an author has shaped a person's life, read on.

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Even Writers Can Participate In Take Your Kid to Work Day

April 26th, 2018

Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day is celebrating its 24th anniversary on April 26, 2018, and you know you want to participate!

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If Classic Novels Were More Like Blockbuster Movies

April 25th, 2018

Not too long ago I found out that Bram Stoker’s original version of Dracula ended in an explosion. Unfortunately, Stoker didn’t have the good sense to keep it in the final draft. Instead he went on about some nonsense, probably something about how Arthur was a lord of whatever. Snooze. It makes a person wonder. What if other books had alternate, more exciting, more explosive sections? What if classic novels worked more like blockbuster movies?

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Analyzing The Last Two Decades of Online Film Criticism

April 24th, 2018

Image via Moriel There was the end of an era, recently. CHUD.com, the irreverent movie news and reviews website run by Nick Nunziata since 1997, closed in March. The site spawned several notable writers, most infamously the contentious figure Devin Faraci, formerly of Birth.Movies.Death, but had been under the radar for several years. As it turns out, however, Nunziata had been been building a new website. 

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The 10 Best Modern Shakespeare Adaptations

April 23rd, 2018

Today is the day we celebrate The Bard’s birth and death. No one knows for certain what day he was actually born, but historians believe it was on April 23, and April 23 is without question the day he died.   So how to celebrate such a momentous day in the life and death of such a momentous writer? Read one of his plays, see a production or… write a list of the best modern film adaptations of his works? Okay, the first two are probably the more respectful options, but we’re going with #3.

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The 10 Best Lookalikes In Fiction

April 20th, 2018

Today is National Look Alike Day! I’m not sure why, exactly, or how one is meant to celebrate such a holiday, but here’s how I’m celebrating it: with a list of the best lookalikes, doubles and doppelgängers in fiction.  So tag your face-twin and settle in. Today, we recognize the ringers.

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Giving Yourself Permission to Break: Writing Through Depression

April 19th, 2018

In a funky piece of life irony, this article is about writing even while depressed. That's not the ironic part, the irony comes from the fact that it was due approximately three days before I sat down to write it, and the reason I didn't write it on time is because I was going through a very, very bad depressive episode, one that resulted in sobbing so hard my whole body ached, and lying in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to accomplish anything.

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In Defense of The Soft Machine’s Cut-Up Twisted Landscape

April 18th, 2018

A friend of mine, let’s call him Christopher, summed up his feelings on the Beat Generation by saying he “liked the idea of the movement” much more than the actual fiction that propagated it, finding a majority of the collective body merely literary flotsam. He didn’t go so far as the attributed Truman Capote quote, “That’s not writing, that’s typing,” and credited the bunch minimally as a few one-trick ponies. I disagreed.

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Don't Go Back: Avoid Spinning Your Wheels on Old Stories

April 17th, 2018

I was fortunate enough to enroll in and complete an MFA program, and prior to entering that program, I had to write two stories to bring to our very first workshop. They weren't good. Don't listen to my cohorts if you track any of them down. They are far too kind and will tell you nice things about at least one of these stories (the one that I'm about to use as an example), but they are wrong— the stories were bad. But that didn't matter at the time. The stories, one in particular, got a reaction. And I fell in love with that specific story. I revised and revised.

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