Columns

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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Library Love: Old Books Make Me Feel Fancy!

March 19th, 2018

Guys, you would not believe what I discovered when I was mindlessly browsing the stacks at my university library: Really. Old. Books. Not science textbooks from the 1950's old. Not even first edition The Great Gatsby old. I'm talking about books about Hawaii when Hawaii was still called the Sandwich Islands. Did you even know that? I did, but I'm pretty sure I learned that from 1980's cartoons. Anyway, it was like looking at the history of history.

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10 Female Authors Who Changed My Life

March 16th, 2018

When we say someone or something changed our life, we generally speak of things or people who had a lasting impact on the way we see or do things. However, there are many small changes that regularly come from encountering situations, objects, and individuals. Throughout my life, I've encountered the work/personality/career/ideas/hustle of many women, and some of the them changed my outlook, inspired me, or changed/expanded/enriched the way I look at words. Here are ten of many.

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The "When" Guide for Writers: Master the Science of Perfect Timing (Part 2)

March 14th, 2018

Part one of this article on creative timing gives you context; my vision for this next part is to give you actionable tactics. My first mission was to reach out to Dan Pink himself, the formidable author of When and many other excellent books, such as Drive and To Sell is Human. His inbox is notoriously difficult to penetrate, so I kept it short and asked him:

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The Second-Draft Slump: How to Get Through Edits

March 13th, 2018

Some people say starting is the hardest part. I say all of it is the hardest part. At least when it comes to writing a book, that is. I previously wrote about how to get to the end of the first draft of your novel, but that's just the beginning. For those of you still working on the first draft, look away. Do not read on as what I'm about to tell you may result in spontaneous punching of your computer screen. 

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The 10 Best Classic YA Books

March 9th, 2018

Today Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle In Time hits theaters, the big-budget feature film adaptation that fans have been waiting for since, oh, about 1962 or so. Madeleine L’Engle’s young adult science fiction masterpiece was the gateway drug for many budding bookworms and nascent sci-fi nerds, a marvelous exercise in fantastical world-building and a trail-blazing example of young, feminist protagonists. Meg Murry was tremendously important to many of us, and 14-year-old Storm Reid is holding the mantle with aplomb in this year’s adaptation.

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Of Mice, Men, and Gloves Fulla Vaseline

March 9th, 2018

This is partly about a classic novel, but more than that, it’s about a time I decided to wear a glove fulla Vaseline. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, there’s an antagonist, a real asshole. His name’s Curley, and he’s introduced wearing a glove on his left hand and high-heeled boots, the type of boots designed for sitting on a horse and telling OTHER people what to do. Here’s a conversation between two characters, George and Candy:

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