Columns

Lessons from 10 Years of Writing About Grammar

October 8th, 2021

10 years ago, I made my LitReactor debut with an article about brainstorming story ideas for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). I find this hilarious now since I only ever did NaNoWriMo once—in 2010—and I’ve never done one since. Not because it’s not a great idea, but because I had my first kid in early 2012 and I haven’t had 2 minutes to myself ever since.

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LURID: Moral Panic in Poetry — A Quilt for David

October 5th, 2021

Quilt image via the Smithsonian, Author Photo via Twitter As a culture, we’re obsessed with news. We doom scroll through repeated facts and conjecture, absorbing the shrieks of the chorus, constructing a hierarchy of information based on whoever shouts loudest, and first. Then we move onto the next novelty, leaving the old one to rot, often uncorroborated, half-told, sometimes outright wrong.

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Celebrating 10 Years of LitReactor!

October 1st, 2021

Happy Birthday, LitReactor! Or should I say, Happy Anniversary? What difference does it make? LitReactor has been around for a solid 10 years now, and either way, we are celebrating! I remember our first post like it was yesterday: a news item on a HuffPo feature about our launch. In the final line of the article, author Andrew Losowsky poses the question:

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Writing with Cognitive Impairments

September 30th, 2021

I might not have degenerative dementia. That’s not as comforting as the doctor telling me that I definitely don’t have degenerative dementia, because what he’s really saying is that I might actually have it. He’s saying that because I have symptoms of degenerative dementia. As a full-time author, as a creative person, as a husband, as a father, and simply as a human being, I find this prospect troubling for a lot of reasons

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Crime and Opportunity: When True-Crime Won't Sustain A Narrative

September 28th, 2021

Image via RODNAE Productions The following is a story I wrote about the story I refused to write.

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The Wisdom of Alan Watts: Improve Your Life and Creativity

September 27th, 2021

Author photo via Wikipedia I first became interested in Alan Watts after a conversation with Matt Cardin on the This Is Horror Podcast where he recommended reading The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety.

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6 Banned Books to Celebrate Banned Books Week

September 24th, 2021

When we think of banned books, it’s often dramatic book-burning scenes or obviously controversial books like American Psycho or The Satanic Verses that first come to mind.

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Yahoo! Answers: Books, Reading, and Writing

September 23rd, 2021

Yahoo! Answers is dead. But from Late 2005 to May 2021, it was the primary place to ask questions about, well, everything. You'd get terrible, poorly formed advice riddled with grammatical errors, but damn was it fun. Sadly, some questions remain unanswered. Which is why I dug back through questionable internet history to make sure everyone got definitive replies about about plot holes, reading methods, writing, and how babby is formed.

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Jack of Shrugtown

September 22nd, 2021

All images via David James Keaton This summer, I stayed at a cabin in the woods hoping for inspiration to strike but read my first Jack Reacher novel instead. I ended up choosing Die Trying, a.k.a. Jack Reacher number 2 (not just because it took place in a cabin in the woods) and holy balls did it have a lot of shrugging in it! But let me back up. I know, I know, everyone hates an origin story. Sorry in advance…

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Storyville: Critical Analysis—An Essential Part of Your Process

September 17th, 2021

Today we are going to talk about critical analysis, a crucial part of your development as an author. I want to define this term, but also let you know how best to apply it to your writing. It’s a more advanced technique, and is something that is important in your evolution from a new author to a solid writer to an elite storyteller.

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