Columns

AWP 2018 Round Up

April 6th, 2018

I lived in Orlando while I went to college and would go to Tampa for only three reasons: to watch the Rays, see a band, or go to a strip club—nudity was banned in Orlando unless Shakespeare was being performed. Orlando didn’t have a great nightlife, but it had a pretty good literary scene. Tampa knows how to party but the only thing I knew they liked to read were Jimmy Buffett lyrics and swinger Craigslist ads.

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The 8 Best Novels About Sports (But Not Really)

April 5th, 2018

It’s difficult to find great novels about sports. In the here and now, writing about sports is often discouraged in writing programs, or left to the short story, and a writer interested in sports often goes into journalism to be closer to the action and drama of a live game. Literary fiction (whatever that is) tends to focus on interiors, both of character and time, rather than the outward exhibition of a game. Sports and fiction often mix like oil and water.

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­­Hurdles and a Pyramid: Plotting Your Short Story

April 4th, 2018

One of the first things students learn in creative writing classes is that the plot of any short story ought to follow a five point structure, sometimes called Freytag’s Pyramid. You can see it here: Image via brittanyekrueger  It’s not wrong.

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How I Revitalized my Reading Life Through Structure and Rules

April 3rd, 2018

My reading life was a little stale at the beginning of last fall. I’d sit down to read, and even if it was a book I was dying to dig into, I’d shut it after mere minutes. I was unfocused, unable to keep my eyes on the page, unsure where to fit reading into my busy life. And this was a problem, because I was just starting to have publishers send me ARCs of upcoming releases for review, and I felt it would be unconscionably rude to accept the books and never actually read them.

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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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