Columns

The Self-Taught MFA: Novel Idea or Fairy Tale?

September 19th, 2014

Quick! Look out the window. On early autumn mornings, they fill the streets: writers of all types and stripes, skipping down the road to the first day of their MFA. Their brand-new book bags are stuffed with the first drafts these programs promise to lovingly and expertly critique. In their hands they clutch shiny red apples—a love offering for the widely published authors-turned-instructors, who will guide them to similar success.

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Prose & Conversation: 'Jesus' Son' by Denis Johnson

September 18th, 2014

Usually, when Richard and I sit down to talk books for Prose & Conversation, it's early-ish in the day. This time, for Denis Johnson's short story collection, Jesus' Son, it was late at night, and for two writers with families and kids and jobs, that meant it was time for our bleakest, most candid, and sometimes silliest, conversation yet. Read on for thoughts on death and dying, the suddenness with which they can occur, and our take on one of the most lyrical, beautifully dark books we've yet read.

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Product Review: Fountain

September 18th, 2014

images courtesy fountain.io Over a year ago, I wrote a roundup of mobile screenwriting apps that, among other things, touched upon the Fountain formatting rules as a viable alternative to dedicated screenplay software.

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It's Made of SCIENCE: Cloning

September 17th, 2014

I took a little summer vacation from IMOS to focus on, among other things, getting comfortable in my new community manager shoes. It took some time to get the fit right, but they're pretty comfortable, and I'm finally getting used to the squeaking.

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Edit My Paragraph! Episode Four

September 16th, 2014

First up this edition, we have Christopher Derrick with the following paragraph:

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An Abundance of Robin Hoods: How Social Bandits Defy Time and Culture

September 15th, 2014

Robin Hood (or Robehod, or Robynhod— the variations are practically endless) first began appearing in ballads sometime back in the fourteenth century. In the many decades since, the myth of the famed outlaw has proven incredibly adaptable. Whenever an authority grows too powerful and begins to usurp the common people, Robin Hood-like characters start to appear in film and literature. From Batman to Katniss Everdeen, elements of the “social bandit” trope can be found in practically every genre and type of storytelling.

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Footnotes: Fifty Years of Roald Dahl's Chocolate Factory

September 12th, 2014

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

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On Weed: Should Writers Write While High?

September 12th, 2014

A woman at the dispensary searches for something called "Green Crack." She tells me this strain is ideal for writers. There are a few great strains, but Green Crack would be the best. Marijuana is legal for recreational use in Colorado. There are some restrictions and other funky laws that tag along, but the average Colorado citizen can avail herself of the services provided by everyone's favorite green friend without going to a lot more trouble than it takes to buy a beer or a lottery ticket.

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Back-to-School with Six Historical YA Fictions

September 11th, 2014

With back-to-school on everyone’s mind, what better way to further your education than with a novel set in a historical time period? From Lindsay Smith’s KGB spy thriller set in Communist Russia to Makiia Lucier’s page-turning suspense story about the struggle to survive the 1918 pandemic flu, we are exploring six books that richly depict life in a specific time period.

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Six Tips for Troubleshooting the Novel

September 10th, 2014

The most prolific authors will pen something like forty novels over the course of their careers. Busy acquisitions editors will work with hundreds of those stories, but mainly just the ones that already work (perhaps with a few tweaks here and there). Independent editors are different in that we will work with just as many, if not more, novels over the course our professional lives, but it's our job to actually make them work. (Or help in this regard as much as humanly possible.)

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