Columns

Why Writers Should Read Across the Genres

July 27th, 2022

One of the many reasons I love writing so much is because it's a craft that continually presents new challenges, which in turn lead to opportunities to become a stronger writer. I don't believe anyone ever completely masters writing. It's too subjective of an art to perfect. However, it's a craft where we constantly learn from one another, whether it's new drafting techniques, ways to gather ideas, alternative narrative structures, or topics we've never researched before.

Read Column →

The Birthing of "Dream Pop Origami"

July 26th, 2022

Back in 2002, after I’d returned from a stint in Burkina Faso for the Peace Corps, I realized I had so many intense and vivid life experiences I hadn’t written down in my journal, which I’d used mostly for diagnosing my mental health every day. At the time, I began jotting my memories down in part to remember everything before the details got blurry, in part to make sense of what had happened, and in part to cohere and connect all those disparate life events together. I also found consolation in language.

Read Column →

"The Autodidacts": Thomas Kendall On Writing Without An Outline

July 25th, 2022

I tend to feel a little physically uncomfortable whenever a writer talks about craft. There’s a kind of involuntary and momentary sensation of repulsion, like when your throat flips up a little bit of sick into your mouth out of nowhere. There’s a gross sourness in my reaction to the word that feels very mine and not mine at the moment of realisation.

Read Column →

Storyville: Writing Psychological Horror

July 23rd, 2022

So the first thing I want to establish is some sort of baseline understanding of what psychological horror actually is. Here is a good definition from Wikipedia:

Read Column →

My Plan To Shape Up A 700-Page Manuscript In Less Than a Year

July 20th, 2022

It’s a great and terrible thing to finish a 700-page manuscript draft. Great because, hey, you did it. Pop some champagne. Or a tallboy. I’m told that France says it's cool, beer in a tallboy can can be officially designated as “champagne.” A 700-page draft is also terrible because, holy shit, you’ve got 700 pages of gobble-de-book with maybe 200 pages of usable novel hidden inside. If you're lucky.

Read Column →

The Footprint of Eraserhead Press

July 19th, 2022

Original image via Valeria Boltneva Young Rose O’Keefe remembers riding in a carpool with five of her kindergarten friends. The other children had already learned how to read, and their power to decipher signs and billboards amazed her. She became jealous of their ability, and memorized the signs so she could play along, but this wasn’t reading. She would look at the pictures in the Dick and Jane books during recess, still unable to understand the words.

Read Column →

7 Great Nonfiction Books Written by Women

July 15th, 2022

Last month, author Elizabeth Day shared a list of the top 10 bestselling paperback nonfiction titles in the UK on Twitter, noting that it was entirely male. The discussion that followed (all perfectly civil, so don’t get excited for drama) was fairly typical for Twitter, in that no definitive conclusion was reached.

Read Column →

How This Pantser Became a Plotter — For Now

July 13th, 2022

Original image by M. Burrows I was so proud of my pantser self. I used to look at all the plotters around me and scoff — they weren’t as cool as I am, with my winging it and my 17 revisions of one book because I didn’t figure out the narrative until draft eight. I thought that was the way to write a book; because it was mine, and I loved it. And then I started grad school.

Read Column →

Here’s to Alcohol: A Ranking of Literary Cocktails

July 8th, 2022

Header image via Pixabay Literary cocktail books have mutated into their own subgenre, or so it seems. At some point in the haze of past birthdays, I was gifted a copy of Tequila Mockingbird by Tim Federle. Before this article, I had not made one drink from it in about five years. Not out of any animosity towards Mr. Federle, you understand. It's just that the last time I tried to make a cocktail, I sliced the top of my left thumb off while cutting a blood orange and the emergency room attendants kept trying to make the injury into a pun.

Read Column →

Where Is The Guy Fieri Of Books?

July 7th, 2022

Guy Fieri wasn’t my favorite person on Earth, and then he dumped a garbage can full of nachos out onto a table on a morning show, and…I had to recalibrate. I like food a lot. But I’m not particular. Or maybe the better word is “fussy.” I’m not fussy about the kind of food I like.  With food, there’s a place for fancy schmancy, and there’s a place for the churro, the hot dog, whatever fever dream flavor can be (just barely) legally put into a Doritos bag.

Read Column →