Columns

Don’t Write That, Write This! How To Be An Awesome Blogger

October 3rd, 2013

If the causes of the Big Bang remain a mystery, the expansion of the Blogoverse can be traced back to the day a writer first discovered Wordpress. With the exponential growth of the form since, The Onion will soon run a story on how scientists have determined that in less than a year the sheer mass of writing blogs will rupture virtual reality and send us all hurtling into hyperspace doom.

Read Column →

8 Ways to Support the Writers in Your Life

October 2nd, 2013

Beyond my personal experiences as a writer, I've also been close friends with more writers than I can count. (That may just be because I'm bad at math, though.) I have relatives who write, I have friends who write, I've dated people who write ... I've seen the relationship from many different angles and figured out a few of the best ways to support the writers I'm close to. While it's important to remember that there's no "one size fits all" option, these eight tips provide a solid starting point for supporting the writers in your life.

Read Column →

Books on Writing: What Authors, Agents and Editors Read

October 1st, 2013

About a decade ago, the shelves at your local Borders (RIP) housed a reasonable selection of books about writing for those hungry to learn and improve their craft. Today, despite the doomsday reports that print books will soon be obsolete, those shelves—let's move to Barnes and Noble—practically groan under the weight of all those who have their own take on crafting prose and an inspired creative life in general.

Read Column →

Culling The Classics: Anna Karenina

September 30th, 2013

I hate Russian authors. Every time I've ever tried to read a book by a Russian author, I've failed miserably. Crime and Punishment? I hadn't committed any crime, but it sure felt like Dostoevsky was punishing me. Dr. Zhivago? Boris Pasternak should've changed his name to Boring Pasternak. Lolita? Vladimir Nabokov was writing in English about a French guy driving around the United States, and it was still too Russian for me.

Read Column →

Updated With Winners: LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: September Edition (...and another chance to win Chuck Palahniuk's new book!)

September 30th, 2013

Flash Fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity UPDATE: Since it's only a few days in and we already have 76 (and counting) entries--we've scrounged up two more copies of Chuck  Palahniuk's new book for a total of THREE books to give away to the best three entries! So keep 'em coming! How It Works We give you inspiration in the form of a picture, poem, video, or similar. You write a flash fiction piece, using the inspiration we gave you. Put your entry in the comments section.

Read Column →

10 Portland Powerhouses Bringing the (Good) Hurt to Publishing

September 27th, 2013

Boasting the largest independent bookstore in the country, dozens of weekly readings (spearheaded by series like Bad Blood and If Not For Kidnap), the Independent Publishing Resource Center (which provides access to letterpresses and everything else that an independent publisher could ask for), a graduate program in publishing, cheap housing and cheaper booze, not to mention numerous publishers, literary journals, and several annual conferences, Portland, Oregon has become a Mecca for writers of all sorts. People here are rabid about their books.

Read Column →

Bad Breakers: 10 Characters That Turned to the Dark Side

September 27th, 2013

Breaking Bad might not be a genre show, but that doesn’t diminish its greatness or my enthusiasm for it. If you haven’t been watching the series, I highly recommend it. One of its main themes is the descent of an ostensibly good man into villainy.  In honor of the imminent end of the series, here is a list of characters from genre fiction who followed a similar descent—who started as decent individuals but soon turned to the, well, Dark Side. 

Read Column →

How Precocious is Too Precocious? Writing Smart but Believable Kids

September 26th, 2013

pre·co·cious adjective \pri-ˈkō-shəs\ of a child : having or showing the qualities or abilities of an adult at an unusually early age. -Merriam Webster Dictionary

Read Column →

Three Books About... Cities

September 26th, 2013

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.” Writers don’t have to live in cities. Steinbeck found life swarming in the waterfronts of Monterey; Faulkner in the dusty streets of Oxford, Mississippi; Shirley Jackson in the small town conspiracies of North Bennington, Vermont. But like Baudelaire said, there’s nothing to beat an hour on the pavement of a great city to supply a writer with material.

Read Column →

Storyville: Fiction As Film—Writing Scenes That Are Visual

September 25th, 2013

When I write fiction, especially longer prose such as novels, I tend to use language that would be right at home on a movie set. I think about scenes, I imagine the way the camera tracks the action, I picture the “actors” in their environment, and I hear the narrator, as if in a voice-over, telling me what’s on his mind. Here are some ways to apply the knowledge we’ve all received from watching movies, the ways that directors and cinematographers capture the action, and elevate the drama. You might be surprised how similar literature and film really are.

Read Column →