Columns

They Do Not Move: Why Boredom is No Excuse

February 23rd, 2012

Why bother? The thought entered my mind every few minutes as I stumbled through another page of Joyce’s Ulysses. Simple answer: I was seventeen and wanted people to think I was intelligent. Other sufferings motivated by just such a pretentious goal: Beckett, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, Borges, and Nabokov. I’m glad nobody asked me to explain these works. In stable adulthood, most if not all of those authors rank among my favorites, but first introductions were an utter failure. Why?

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Writing in the Negative

February 22nd, 2012

When physicists first discovered the existence of black holes, they identified these gravitational oddities not by physically seeing them, but by noticing how neighboring celestial bodies reacted in their presence. It was enough to compel scientists to rethink their observations, to realize contemporary models were missing a component — albeit one not visible to the human eye.

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The Age of No Controversy

February 22nd, 2012

After my last column on required reading (and after leaving my newly purchased copy of Crime and Punishment on a plane), I decided to put my money were my mouth was and picked up a digital copy of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a novel I had tragically under-read when it was assigned to me in high school. While reading, I found myself wondering about the controversy Golding’s tale generated upon its release.

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Ask The Lit Coach: "Should I Submit Queries To Publishers If My First Novel Isn't Finished?" and More

February 21st, 2012

Certainly, successes in self and ePublishing have shaken the traditional publishing model. Having your work quickly realized as a book, bypassing agents and scores of rejection letters may appear alluring, however there are no short cuts when it comes to good craft. Good writing is still good writing and everything that follows in marketing, promoting and selling the work takes a tremendous amount of time, energy and persistence.  

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Book Brawl: The Strain vs. The Passage

February 21st, 2012

Each month I throw two books, somehow related, into the BOOK BRAWL ring to fight it out for the coveted title of literary champion. Two books enter. One book leaves. This month we’ve got the first titles in two concurrent modern vampire trilogies.  Justin Cronin’s The Passage, meet Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain. Which one sucks? Let’s find out!

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Post-Mortem: 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski

February 17th, 2012

Post-Mortem: As much a book review as an autopsy is a eulogy. A breakdown of the mechanics of a book and the reasons why it should be read by the writers among us.

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Comics 101: A Question of Canon

February 17th, 2012

When one associates with excessively literate company, it is quite impossible to avoid the game of canon bingo. Titles of books are invoked and those assembled either declare they have read it, or confess they haven’t yet. The only prize in this contest is the smug satisfaction of being the most well-read person in a room full of well-read people. These are special books, tomes that the enigmatic cabal known only as THEY have decreed you must read, classic works of genius so time-honored and true that they made it on the only list that really matters in literature: canon.

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Get Off The Dang Computer: The Benefits Of Hands-On Research

February 16th, 2012

A couple of months ago I was in Texas visiting my brother. On my list of things to do, after eat at Amy's Ice Cream and get some hardcore barbecue was visit a gun range. There were three reasons I wanted to do this:

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Storyville: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

February 16th, 2012

It may be one of the most common questions that people ask authors and teachers when they get them alone, or raise their hands at a conference, university or reading. Where do you get your ideas? Since we’ve already explored a lot of technical topics over the last couple of months (cover letters and Duotrope) as well as some craft (finding your voice) and some process (tracking my story “Rudy Jenkins Buries His Fears”), I thought that this time we could talk about something more inexact and abstract: where to get your ideas.

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A Real Monster: Writing About People You Know

February 15th, 2012

When I was a teenage boarding school student, there was a man working at my school to whom I looked up — a hell of a lot. I looked up to him so much that when he was fired for "inappropriate behavior" I felt as though my understanding of the world had cracked. It was that serious. When you're sixteen, and someone you admire turns out to not to be perfect (and in this case, he turns out to be a man who acts on the urge to touch vulnerable boys), your life can change for good.

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