Columns

Bullet Journaling: The Writer's New Best Friend

May 12th, 2020

Image via Cottonbro Studio The luckiest writers get to rise in the morning, start writing when they feel like it, and then quit writing when they feel like it as well. They have nothing else to do with the rest of their day, other than chores around the house and any other everyday life things (including paying bills, going to the doctor, and all the un-fun stuff we have to do).

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Writing Advice From Metal Songs

May 8th, 2020

If you find yourself facing writer's block, frustrated and incapable of injecting the kind of feeling into your work that you’re looking for, and just overall feeling down about the state of your writing project, maybe you need to crabwalk your way to the mosh pit and make a few noses bloody, first. Consider this a playlist if you like, but I consider the following some of the best writing encouragement I’ve ever received. Take heed from these brutal overlords of shred and get back to work.

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Horror Book Recommendations for Geminis

May 8th, 2020

I'm a Gemini. Full stop. I wasn't born on the cusp of another sign, I don't borrow from any other astrological attributes. I fall squarely in the camp of Gemini. To provide a little context to my familiarity with astrology I'll have you know that I don't read my daily horoscope. I don't really ascribe to the idea that ruling planets have such and such effect on my life.

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10 Hacks To Get The Most From Your eReader

May 7th, 2020

Let’s talk about some behavioral and non-technical things you can do to improve your eReader experience. I’m not talking about hardcore stuff like unscrewing panels or rooting your device or turning it into a Playstation 4 or whatever. Those guides are out there and...well, if you want to play a Playstation 4, they invented this thing called Playstation 4. Playstation 4, a device designed specifically to play Playstation 4 games, turns out to be the best gizmo when it comes to doing Playstation 4 stuff. Go figure.

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Ask Nick: Publishing 201 — Do I Need to Attend Conventions or Conferences?

May 6th, 2020

Hello, and welcome back to Publishing 201—an occasional column in which I'll answer your questions about writing and publishing, so long as they haven't been asked and answered a million times already. There is plenty of 101-level advice out there, and thousands of writers who can repeat it, but very little has been written for writers further along in their careers or aesthetic development. If you have a 201-level question you'd like me to answer, reach out!

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Book Promotion In The Age of Pandemic

May 4th, 2020

Bookstores and libraries are closed.  In-person gatherings are either discouraged or banned (at least in states not run by sycophants). The media and entertainment industries are in tailspin—either bracing for layoffs or overwhelmed by coronavirus coverage.  Which begs the question—what the hell are authors supposed to even do right now? 

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10 Horror Novels You Should Not Try to Reinvent Unless You Are Awesome, Brave, and a Little Stupid

May 1st, 2020

Maybe writing any novel requires you to be awesome, brave, and a little bit stupid. If that were true, I could put any novel from any genre on this list. Instead, I limited myself to horror, and chose novels that represent broader categories or tropes that are easy to execute badly. Many examples exist of authors who did just that. There are fewer—but still important—examples of authors who created their own unique take on a popular idea that worked really well.

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All Stories Are Existential

April 30th, 2020

Many readers would consider existential novels to be a sub-genre of literary fiction, including works by Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir, and maybe a few more contemporary names like David Foster Wallace and Milan Kundera. Really, though, all fiction is existential, and if yours isn’t, then it’s probably pretty boring. Here’s why.

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The Good and Bad of Expanding the Definition of 'Literature'

April 29th, 2020

What is literature? And what isn’t? Labels like “literature” expand and contract as a medium like books breathes in and out. Right now, a lot of the talk seems to be about expanding the definition of literature. Expanding and including seem to be the way we’re headed. Is this a good idea? A bad idea? Some of both? Does the expansion of “literature’s” definition accomplish the goal of bringing more readers into the fold?

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Why I Write My Mental Illness into My Non-Fiction

April 28th, 2020

Image by Andra Piacquadio The first non-fiction piece I ever wrote about mental health was in the fall of 2012. It was an op-ed for my school newspaper urging my fellow students to stop joking about self-harm. I wrote it in this weird space between first-and-third person, because I wanted it to be personal but I wasn’t ready to admit that I was the person hurt by the insensitive jokes.

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