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You're—I mean YOUR—Complete Grammarian Gift Guide
December 8th, 2014
Does your dad constantly point out typos and grammar mistakes on signs or menus? Does your best friend type out all the words in her grammatically correct text messages? Does your coworker obsessively edit any projects you work on together before turning them in? Does your niece have a bigger vocabulary than your college English professor (and use it ALL.THE.TIME!?!)? Well, here’s what you can get them for the holidays! (Besides an eye roll and a stiff drink to loosen up that stick in their you-know-what.)
Read Column →This Holiday Season, Give the Greatest Gift of All: Books!
December 5th, 2014
If you're a writer or a passionate reader, you probably like giving books as gifts. It's in our nature, isn't it? These things become so precious to us that we have to share them with other people. By sharing a book that we love we're sharing a part of ourselves—that mutual point of connection we want other people to see and understand.
Read Column →The Gift of Gab: Mastering the Maximal
December 4th, 2014
As beginning writers, we're often counseled to cut our sentences down to size. And no wonder—beginning writing tends to be full of redundancies, mixed metaphors, and clauses (of often questionable relevance) stacked ceiling to floor. So you learn to limit your youthful excesses and voila! You've got hard, crisp sentences that don't fuck around. Damn, you think. Me and Hemingway, chillin'.
Read Column →Where To Buy Cheap eBooks
December 4th, 2014
'Tis the Holiday Season, when gift giving abounds. Okay, maybe you don't participate in a yearly ritual that involves exchanging gifts for familial love and bonding, but many of us do.
Read Column →Noir at the Bar: An Oral History
December 3rd, 2014
Header image via Brent Schoonover If you’re on Facebook or other social media outlets and you're following characters like LitReactor’s Rob Hart or Thuglit’s Todd Robinson, chances are you’ve seen invites and pictures of an event called Noir at the Bar. Even if you’re not connected to those two and you’re friends with someone like Benjamin Whitmer, Hilary Davidson, Owen Laukkanen, Megan Abbott, and J.
Read Column →Three Books About... Snow
December 1st, 2014
They say no two snowflakes look alike, an idea with such immediate relevance to the over-nurtured product of modern middle-class rearing practices that a whole subreddit is devoted to tales of Special Snowflakes — people afflicted with the syndrome of thinking that they’re unique, special and just a bit better than everyone else.
Read Column →UPDATED WITH WINNER - LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: November Edition
November 26th, 2014
Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity. Welcome to LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown, a monthly bout of writing prowess. How It Works We give you inspiration in the form of a picture, poem, video, or prompt. You write a flash fiction piece using the inspiration we gave you. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked and awarded a prize.
Read Column →A Writer's Gratitude List: 12 Things to be Thankful For
November 26th, 2014
Thanksgiving approaches, and it's time to give thanks. As writers, we have a unique set of items to be thankful for. Having trouble finding that gratitude inside yourself? Maybe this list of writerly items will help steer you in the right direction.
Read Column →5 Books that Say "Fuck You," not "Thank You"
November 26th, 2014
Face it: In this season of harvest, bounty, and plentitude, sanctimony reigns. We justify our piggishness at the Thanksgiving table by fooling ourselves into thinking that we’re celebrating a noble emotion: gratitude. But in fact, we give thanks, oh Lord, for our third helping of stuffing, for the host’s choice of a delightful tarte tatin over a clichéd pumpkin pie, and most of all for the fact that nobody makes that godawful 1950s canned sweet potatoes with marshmallows casserole any more. (What’s that you say? Your grandmother makes this horror every year?
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