Columns

10 Songs About Writing

January 3rd, 2013

Songwriters spend a great deal of time and energy composing songs about love and loss and regret and d-i-v-o-r-c-e and what prompted Billy Joe McAllister to jump off the Tallahatchee Bridge. All well and good. But how many songs are devoted to writing? Professions generally don't serve as the subject of music. ("Convoy" (trucking), "Casey Jones" (locomotive operation), and "Good Lovin'" (internal medicine) are the exceptions that prove the rule.) Still, I came up with more titles than I imagined I would.

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Truman Capote's Buried Gun

January 2nd, 2013

[Truman Capote] is the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm. -Norman Mailer

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Your Favorite Book Sucks: 'On The Road'

January 2nd, 2013

Your Favorite Book Sucks is an ongoing column, written by different people, that takes a classic or popular book and argues why it isn't really all that great. Confrontational, to be sure, but it's all in good fun, so please play nice. Damn dirty self-indulgent over-rated hippie tripe. -High School Josh on Jack Kerouac's travelogue cum beat bible, On The Road.

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10 Grammar & Usage-Related New Year’s Resolutions

December 31st, 2012

2012 is almost over, and the predicted apocalypse was (again) a flop-- so it’s time to get your shit together for 2013! I know you have probably already purchased a gym membership and sworn off quadruple mocha cappuccinos, but did you consider the health of your writing? Well, you should—it’s lookin’ kinda flabby! Here are 10 grammar-related resolutions to get your writing back in shape.

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Best Books of 2012: Friends of LitReactor Edition with Irvine Welsh, Jack Ketchum, Douglas Coupland, and Stephen Graham Jones

December 31st, 2012

We've already given you our staff picks for the Best Books of 2012, as well as a supplemental Genre Edition for the geeks, but who the hell cares what a bunch of nobodies have to say when some real, live authors are willing to tell us what to read?

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UPDATE WITH WINNER - LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: December Edition

December 31st, 2012

Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity. Welcome to LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown, a monthly bout of writing prowess, in which you're challenged to thrill us in 250 words or less. How It Works We give you a picture. You write a flash fiction piece, using the picture we gave you as inspiration. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked, and awarded a prize.

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What Makes A Southern Novel?

December 28th, 2012

This week brought the release of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, a revenge epic about a freed slave turned bounty hunter who dares to vanquish mountains, the law, and death itself to rescue his beloved Broomhilda. Tarantino has referred to the film as a "southern" rather than the more traditional western, and the marketing department for the film released the above graphic to delineate the relatively uncommon film category.

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LitReactor Staff Picks: The Best Books of 2012 - Genre Edition

December 27th, 2012

Yesterday we gave you our all purpose Best of 2012 LitReactor staff picks and let's be honest-- there were more gems in there than a greedy dwarf's asshole. But just in case you're looking for something a little more genre-specific, we rounded up our resident experts on comics, fantasy, and crime fiction to regale us with their favorites. Speak friend and enter!

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Scandalous: 8 Reasons Intelligent Writers Must Read Twilight

December 27th, 2012

Ready your pitchforks: I'm about to make an unironic defense of the Twilight series, and even argue that you---or any other intelligent writer---should read it. Here are eight reasons you should spend time with these famously terrible books.

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Adventures in Self-Publishing Part 5: The Virtue of Patience, And Also Money

December 27th, 2012

I got my first check from Amazon! It was for less than a hundred dollars. After taxes, it's not enough for a hard night of drinking. I do not care. I got paid cash money for a thing I made up in my head. That's tough to beat.

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