Columns

What Type Can Do (And How It Can Maybe – But Probably Won’t – Save the Global Economy)

June 17th, 2014

As a graphic designer, it’s rare that I get to interject my opinion into hot-button debates about the evolution of economic models… so it’s with great joy that I offer my (increasingly worthless) two-cents on the topic of Thomas Picketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”

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Arrest Us! Week Three Progress Report

June 16th, 2014

Here we are, three weeks into our official writing event, Arrest Us! Even though we still have two weeks until our July 1st submission deadline, we have already wracked up north of fifty stories, and more are coming in every day. It's a pretty crowded battlefield out there, and the competition is coming on without mercy.

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Culling The Classics: Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories

June 16th, 2014

First, let's get the obvious out of the way. [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ClCpfeIELw&feature=kp] Now that we're past that: Holly Golightly! The original manic pixie dream girl! Breakfast at Tiffany's was a novella before it was a cinema classic before it was a mid '90s pop-rock jam. Let's please never mention that song again. The Book Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories, by Truman Capote (Random House, 1958)

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This Is The Single Biggest Mistake Indie Authors Make While Promoting Their Work—And It Needs To Stop

June 13th, 2014

That's right. This is so important I used an Upworthy-style headline to ensure people would click.  Have you ever watched The Office? I'm talking about the American version here, not the UK version. 

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Eat Lightning, Write Thunder: Writing Lessons From Rocky Balboa

June 13th, 2014

image: Welch, Scott D. Rocky movies inspire me to all sorts of new heights. A pair of good headphones and "Hearts On Fire" from the Rocky IV soundtrack? All it takes to push me to the threshold of human endurance...on a low-impact elliptical trainer while Reba reruns play on a gym's mounted television. But hey, we all have our own mountains to climb.

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Live Dangerously with Second-Person Perspective

June 12th, 2014

You have a few seconds at work, in between sending the morning report and the weekly staff meeting. You’re thinking about where to get lunch, and the peculiar brown sweater Cathy wore this morning (is it made of hemp, a burlap sack, dog hair? The possibilities are endless). As you scroll through Facebook, past the political rants and Buzzfeed quiz results, you see a new post by LitReactor on second-person perspective.

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10 Books To Give To Your Crush

June 12th, 2014

A book is the perfect gift to give to your crush. They are not ridiculously expensive, and if upon receiving the book the person says, “I don’t really read,” you’ve just saved yourself a lot of time! Crush over. That person is clearly not dateable.

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Book vs. Film: "The Fault in Our Stars"

June 11th, 2014

WARNING: Spoilers freely discussed.

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Fiction Shmiction: The Science of Stories and Unconscious Beliefs

June 9th, 2014

In my previous article in this series I tried to convince you of one of my core beliefs: That the stories we tell matter because they become the fabric of the world we live in. One of the more interesting reader comments on that article guides us nicely to the core of the next issue I want to talk about. JYH wrote:

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5 Dreadful Memoirs You Never Have to Read

June 6th, 2014

What makes a memoir truly and abysmally bad? Leonard Pinth-Garnell, the host of SNL’s series of sketches dedicated to “Bad Red Chinese Ballet,” “Bad Conceptual Theater,” and other memorably dreadful works of performance art, offered only evaluations, not analyses. “Stunningly bad.” “Exquisitely awful.” Pinth-G was inevitably on target — the art he reviewed was nothing if not bad! bad! bad! Pinning down the reasons is a tougher task. Here are a few tentative explanations:

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