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Organic Word-Growing: Why You Should Keep the Shit in Your Writing
January 8th, 2013
Many writers approach their text with the intent of keeping out every particle of shit. There are two drawbacks: First, this perfectionism inhibits creativity and the writing process; and second, writing that lacks the flaws naturally found in language will feel artificial. For many of us, our stories and the writing process improve when we embrace organic word-crafting, using the shit of our first draft to fertilize the drafts yet to come.
Read Column →Are You Gonna Write for Money or Art?
January 7th, 2013
Towards the end of 2012, Publishers Weekly named E L James as its Publishing Person of the Year. This nugget prompted a minor rant from me on the subsequent Unprintable podcast. My beef was that all James had done to earn the accolade was sell a lot of books. What about those, like Hilary Mantel, who stood out from the crowd because of the quality of their work?
Read Column →Lord of the Strings: The Influence of Tolkien on Heavy Metal Music
January 7th, 2013
Why do metalheads love The Lord of the Rings so much? What is it about Tolkien's mythology that has inspired countless bands to sing about wizards and orcs and elves and hobbits? Fantasy has long been considered the literature of "nerds," and metalheads have a reputation for being antisocial-- hiding away in their hobbit holes, shunning visitors and practicing scales-- but there's got to be more to it than an overlap in the Venn diagram of geek culture.
Read Column →Ask The Agent: A Look At Graphic Novel Submissions
January 7th, 2013
Navigating the rough terrain of today’s publishing industry shouldn’t be a solo event. This week in Ask the Agent, I’ll explore and dissect a few of the industry’s graphic novel mysteries. I want to talk specifically about graphic novels today. Over the past few months, I have received numerous questions regarding the submission of graphic novels to agents, so I decided to dedicate this particular Ask The Agent to some of those questions.
Read Column →10 Questions with Ed Sikov... by Ed Sikov
January 4th, 2013
The Boys’ and Girls’ Little Book of Alcohol, Ed Sikov’s first work of fiction, has just been published by Vook. It’s a novella with annotated cocktail recipes, and its central character is a former film studies professor named Ed, who writes a syndicated column about cocktails. LitReactor thought it might be fun to have our intrepid columnist Ed Sikov interview Ed. Unfortunately, most of what Ed had to say was unusable; here’s what we managed to salvage.
Read Column →We Survived The Apocalypse And 10 Other Reasons 2013 Is Going To Rule
January 4th, 2013
2012 has been a stressful year. With the constant fake threat of fake apocalypse fake hanging over our heads, it was a year of introspection, of looking back. Well, now is the time to look forward, and what I'm looking forward to most are books. It's 2013, it's not the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!
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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.
Read Column →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
Read Column →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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