Columns

Five Things I Learned About Writing From Learning How To Make Games

March 24th, 2021

Header image via New Old Stock Games have always been something of a dark art to me, a mysterious form of modern magic, and for the longest time, I’ve played them, loved them, had profound experiences with them, but never really understood them.  How could endless lines of code make all that cool stuff happen? All the pew-pews and the jumping and that? It’s pure magic. How could it not be?

Read Column →

Thirteen Musicians Who Can Also Write

March 23rd, 2021

Pictured: Exene Cervenka, Jim Carroll, Nick Cave For decades I was a musician first, writer second — though I’m grateful that has flipped over the last five years. Since writing is a solitary endeavor, I feel the energy a writer expends is reciprocated in greater, more immediate reward — even if it’s only confined to our private vantage. Since the lifestyle of a musician seems to inexplicably require wasting large chunks of time where you’re not actually doing the “thing,” it’s almost unfair to compare the two crafts.

Read Column →

Who Owns The Story?

March 22nd, 2021

Let’s say you and I date (I’ll apologize now, prepare do be disappointed, even in the hypothetical). Let’s say you’re an artist, and in the course of our romance you ask if I’d be willing to pose nude for a painting. And I agree. Again, prepare to be disappointed. You paint me naked. And you flatter me a little bit because, you know, we’re dating, and I’d appreciate an extra inch here, a subtracted inch there, some hair removal. Lots of hair removal. Butt area, primarily, for hair removal.

Read Column →

"WandaVision" Demonstrates the Untapped Potential of the Superhero Genre

March 19th, 2021

Superheroes can do anything. This is true not just of the characters themselves, but also the stories they inhabit. A superhero narrative is so flexible it can be bent into any shape the writer can imagine—everything from detective procedural to sci-fi farce. It is a genre where literally nothing is too far-fetched or ridiculous. Superman can go from saving a cat in a tree to mediating peace in an interstellar war within the same issue. That limitless potential is one of the reasons the genre he sired has endured and thrived over the last century.

Read Column →

Weapons of Choice to Draft That Novel Now

March 16th, 2021

You know how I know it’s March? Nope, not the sea of green in preparation for St. Paddy’s Day. Not the light spring breeze that I can almost pretend is actually there. No.  I know it’s March because I can feel the collective ooze of self-loathing from a community of writers who are feeling their goals of writing-that-dang-novel-this-year coming to a carpet burn-y halt. 

Read Column →

March Madness: 8 Books That Will Mess With Your Head

March 15th, 2021

When I was in high school, I decided to take a Human Psychology class in place of a traditional Science class. About a week into instruction, I tripped out on the fact that my brain was literally learning about itself. It might have been because I often showed up to my 5th period class after taking a few hits off a joint at lunch, but I remember feeling like it was really weird for my brain to be studying... brains. Is that only weird to me? 

Read Column →

Five Things I Loved (and Five I Loathed) About My MFA Experience

March 12th, 2021

I last wrote for this site in late 2015. The core cause of my absence is this: I spent 2015 through 2018 earning my Master's of Fine Arts in fiction and have spent the time since teaching comp and lit at a local community college. My hope is that these experiences give me some worthwhile insight to share. Given the thoroughly mixed experience I had with the MFA program itself, I felt this would be a good place to start. So, in this article, I'm going to share five things I loved and five I hated about my master's program.

Read Column →

Reflections on WriteOnCon, A Jam-Packed Online Conference for Kidlit Writers

March 11th, 2021

Several years ago, I heard about an online writing conference specifically geared toward kidlit authors called WriteOnCon. Every year since then, I've eagerly signed up for the conference and counted down the days until mid-February to attend the live workshops, panels, and Q&As, as well as soak in the wisdom from the various blogs, podcasts, and vlogs the conference sets up.

Read Column →

The Sound of Absence: Utilizing White Space in Poetry

March 10th, 2021

When I first started writing poetry, my focus was on imagery and how devices like metaphor, simile, and personification could help elicit a stronger reaction in my readers. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent (and still spend) writing analogies in my drafting notebook or scribbling down weird appearances that showed up in my dreams in hopes that one day, they’ll work themselves into a poem or be a soundboard for a doorway into something dark and surreal that ends up on the page.

Read Column →

What is Quiet Horror?

March 9th, 2021

There are so many enticing elements of horror that draw readers in and hold their attention. It's the dread-inducing suspense, chilling prose or maybe that creeping tension winding tighter and tighter. But nothing enthralls me more than the atmospheric feeling you get from reading quiet horror. Such a story is palpable and I crave it with every new book I pick up. This is something that I believe to be lost on a lot of readers of the macabre. Many are familiar with the gripping stories, but not so much the term or meaning of quiet horror.

Read Column →