Columns

You Don’t Have to Write About Everything, Actually

January 12th, 2023

In the final season of BoJack Horseman, there’s an episode where writer Diane Nguyen laments that if she doesn’t write her book of personal essays about trauma now, she never will. Even though what she really wants is to write a fun YA girl detective series. As a viewer and writer, it was incredible to see this on a TV show. An actual discussion about what writers feel obligated to write. Depending on your life experiences, you may feel obligated to write about: gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, neurodivergence, trauma, etc.

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Book vs. Film: "The Pale Blue Eye"

January 11th, 2023

Edgar Allan Poe is widely considered the inventor of detective fiction, and his death is something of an enigma (was it the result of his alcoholism, or something more sinister?), so it seems fitting that the author should be the subject of a fictional murder mystery narrative involving a kind of hardboiled detective transplanted to the 1830s.

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Walter Mosley, Natural Language, and Empathy

January 9th, 2023

Most people know Walter Mosley, who turns 71 years old this week, from his detective novels, including the famous Easy Rawlins series which began with Devil in a Blue Dress. But Mosley is much more than a mystery writer. He’s written sci-fi, essays, and literary fiction, though none of that is as well-known as his mystery work.

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What I Learned From 6 Books On Writing Faster

January 6th, 2023

Header image via Pixabay Want to write faster? Get in line. This is a question that’s been plaguing writers since the dawn of time. So as you can imagine, there are a ton of books on the market claiming they have the answer. And while the cynic in me finds it impossible to believe that any of them have more to say than “practice, practice, practice” — after all, isn’t that the fastest way to Carnegie Hall?

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Wednesday Addams and the Nihilist as Narrator

January 5th, 2023

Header image public domain The internet has been buzzing about the new Addams Family Netflix adaptation since it was released in November, especially a catchy dance sequence showing Wednesday Addams killing it on the dance floor. I watched the show and generally enjoyed its quippy dark humor at face value, but I couldn’t help but wonder why someone as seemingly nihilistic as Wednesday Adams is compelled to do anything to further her own plot, never mind get out on the floor at a high school prom and bust some moves (not the first Addams to start a dance craze.

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The Masterplan Moonwalk

January 3rd, 2023

So, there’s this long and rich history of ridiculously lucky fictional villains and their impossibly successful schemes.

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Typos: The Final Word

January 2nd, 2023

Typos are like bedbugs: they’re manageable, but they’re impossible to eradicate. Nobody likes them, but everybody encounters them at some point. And both bedbugs and typos appear in books more often than we’d like to admit. I vote we have this one, last discussion about typos, then we stop talking about them. They’re boring, they don’t hold the meaning so many of us think they do, and, like, who gives a shit?

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"Madam Tomahawk" and the Thrill of Writing in Someone Else’s Universe

December 30th, 2022

If you stick with the writing game long enough, someone may ask you to take a shot at characters and worlds invented by someone else. It could be a Star Wars story, or the next chapter in a novel some writer friends are passing around for fun. Snatching the proverbial baton from someone else can present some (fun) challenges unique to writing—and it’s potentially overwhelming if you’re not careful.

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Books We’re Looking Forward To In 2023

December 29th, 2022

If you’re anything like us, you start every year promising to read the books in your precariously stacked TBR pile. And every year, somehow, we defy the laws of physics by adding even more books to that stack with very few removed. It’s the paradox of being a bookworm. There’s never enough time and always too many fantastic books. 2023 won’t be the year any of us break that cycle, as there are already so many good books waiting to be released. We went through and found eleven we’re looking forward to the most in the New Year.

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Phantom of the Hip-Hopera: An Improv Novel-Writing Experiment

December 23rd, 2022

They tell you to start your column with your best line, so I’ll start by telling you this is a story about a new way to write fiction. And now I can get to the extremely boring second line: I do a podcast. If I was good at promoting myself, I would link it here. But I’m not.* Besides, it’s the worst kind of podcast: just some dope talking about whatever, no format, all nonsense.

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