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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.
Read Column →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.
Read Column →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?
Read Column →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.
Read Column →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.
Read Column →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!
Read Column →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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