Columns

How 'The Westing Game' Inspired 'Ready Player One' Thirty Years Later

March 30th, 2018

Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game turns thirty this year. That's three decades of inspiring later books and younger authors with its cheeky clues, cast of wildly diverse weirdos, and ever-twisting plot. And no book seems as directly inspired by The Westing Game as Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, the big-budget adaptation of which is hitting theaters today, directed by a little nobody named Steven Spielberg.

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Research Isn't Writing

March 28th, 2018

I used to hate research. I'd sit down to write a story and if I felt like I didn't know the topic well enough, I'd scrap it. I didn't want to be a historian, I wanted to be a writer. Of course, that was a ridiculous and harmful approach to writing, and I've since learned my lesson. I've learned that I actually don't know a damn thing, and I should be researching almost everything I write. But I've also learned that research can be incredibly fun, enveloping me in more information that I could possibly process. 

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8 Cliché Narratives I Want More Of

March 27th, 2018

"Avoid clichés at all costs!"   It seems like that line appears in 90-95% of writing articles. In fact, I've been known to implore writers not to create plots about detectives going back home to deal with weird murders or stories about white saviors. That being said, there are certain narratives that work for me, that I enjoy most of the time. Narratives I think writers should keep banging out, because the occasional gem is worth having to wade through a bunch of novels with the same underlying elements.

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10 Literary Holidays We Desperately Need

March 26th, 2018

Take a look at the calendar. Come up with your top three complaints about it.  Here are mine:

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Flannery O'Connor's Greatest Hits

March 23rd, 2018

Image via Georgia Humanities Flannery O’Connor is one of those names you hear a lot, but folks who aren’t interested in writing and short stories don’t know a lot about her.

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3 Things Critique Groups Are Great For (and 3 Things They Really Aren't)

March 23rd, 2018

Whether you’re new to writing or a seasoned pro, a good critique group is, if not a necessity, a pretty damned good idea. How else are you going to get out of your own head—and out of your own way—so you can see your work the way a reader will? And how else are you going to get your work in shape to submit?

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5 Reasons to Study Creative Writing in School

March 22nd, 2018

There’s no One True Way to be a writer. Instead, everybody has their own path to success, their own process, their own stories to tell. Some writers write every day at 4 a.m. with a cup of coffee and the mighty roar of a powerful grizzly bear. Good on them. Others write for a full day in a frenzy of inspiration and activity, lay back and slip into a catatonic state for weeks, and repeat. And there’s so many in between.

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Writing: All It Takes Is Guts

March 22nd, 2018

4 years ago I was sweating bullets, sitting in the bright sunlight of Cross Plains, Texas during Barbarian Days. Now let me answer your first two questions: One: Cross Plains is a small, oilfield town that the Texas highways left behind a long time ago.

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Seven Badass Female Characters Written by Women

March 21st, 2018

At Glamour Magazine’s 25th annual Women of the Year Awards, recipient of the Hollywood Hero award, Reese Witherspoon, said, “I dread reading scripts that have no women involved in their creation — because inevitably, the girl turns to the guy and says, ‘What do we do now?’” While she declared exasperation at this line, she urged women to turn the question back on themselves and to ponder, “What can we do to encourage the creation of more empowered female characters?”

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5 Promotion Tips for Small Press and Self Published Authors

March 19th, 2018

Unflattering picture of author provided by author In 2015 I wrote a parody novel called Kanye West—Reanimator. It reimagined H.P. Lovecraft's story "Herbert West—Reanimator" with—you guessed it—Kanye West as the titular character. Yolo House, a kinda-sorta offshoot of Lazy Fascist Press created specifically for the book's release, published it.

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