Columns

20 Mistakes I Made Writing that You Should Never Do … But I Would Probably Do Again, If I Started All Over

January 15th, 2020

20) Writing this post. See, I got to 19 and figured it was smart to make it an even twenty, but then I looked through the list and thought, “Why am I confessing to all this, even in a semi-comedic meta-cognitive reverse psychology format?” Twist beginning: This is the mistake! It probably won’t really help people and might only be mildly entertaining. What good can come of this or any of it?

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2020 Hindsight: 10 Years Worth of Grammar Advice

January 14th, 2020

A decade ago, I decided it was my duty to help people with a less-than-solid understanding of English grammar. To that end, I opened a Twitter account (@writerscramp1—because someone had already taken writerscramp. Jerk.) and popped up a writing class through the Seattle arts organization Fremont Abbey. For a few months, a small group of people showed up regularly and let me lecture them about grammar and craft.

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The Magic of Brian Keene’s Bedroom

January 13th, 2020

If you’re hoping this piece will feature some kind of romantic advice I learned from Brian Keene, you're going to be disappointed. If you really want relationship tips from Brian, you should probably just ask him on Twitter, because this will be an unromantic article in many ways. 

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Should I Use A Sensitivity Reader?

January 10th, 2020

Maybe you’ve heard a little bit about sensitivity readers. Maybe you’ve heard they’re the PC Police. Maybe you’ve heard that they help bring more diversity to books. Maybe you’ve heard they’re expensive. Maybe you’ve heard they’re worth the price. Maybe you’ve heard horror stories, maybe heroic stories. The real question for writers isn’t whether or not someone else used a sensitivity reader. It’s whether YOU should use one.

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Planes, Readings, and Mayhem: My Year on the Road

January 9th, 2020

While 2019 was a shitshow in many aspects, it was a fantastic year for me as a writer. I sold two novels in France and one in Turkey, received nominations for the Stoker and Locus awards, and won the Wonderland Book Award. I was invited to places like the Texas Book Festival, which I'd been going to for a decade as a fan, and the Oxford Conference for the Book in Mississippi. However, my favorite thing was that I spent a lot of time on the road doing book stuff. I read in Austin, Houston, Baltimore, Denver, Grand Rapids, and Chicago.

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The Mandalorian With No Name: How Star Wars Fuses Sci-Fi and Westerns

January 8th, 2020

Star Wars is a place. One of my favorite fictional destinations. A vast continent of stories to discover, so expansive that it cannot be contained by over a dozen movies, hundreds of hours of television and video games, and enough books to fill a library. We have been excavating for the last forty years and have only just scratched the surface. While many are about epic struggles between good and evil, Star Wars feels like a real place because it can encompass a wide variety of stories, just like the world we live in.

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I'll Never Read All the Books On My TBR — and That's A Good Thing!

January 7th, 2020

There are more than 1,000 books in my want-to-read shelf on GoodReads. I know this, because every time I add a book to that shelf (which I do multiple times a day, it seems), that number flashes before my eyes, rising just a little bit. One drop into the ocean of my TBR; another, another, and you’d think I was drowning.

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Count Dracula: Misunderstood Monster, Bloodsucking Bastard, And Everything In-Between

January 6th, 2020

On January 1st, 2020, the BBC debuted yet another version of Dracula, this one from Doctor Who and Sherlock collaborators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (Netflix made the full three-part miniseries available to view on January 4th here in the U.S.). Moffat and Gatiss have stated that this new adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel will return the titular character to his monstrous origins.

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The New Year's Resolutions of Your Favorite Literary Characters

January 3rd, 2020

As we say goodbye to 2019, it's time to start planning for 2020 and all that it will bring. This includes, of course, our yearly tradition of making New Year’s resolutions that may or may not be a little overly optimistic. Some of you might have decided that you’re going to read more books in the coming months. Others might already have resolved that this is the year that you’re going to get published. 

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Chuck Palahniuk's 'Consider This': A Reading List

January 2nd, 2020

If you're not excited about Chuck Palahniuk's upcoming how-to book, Consider This, you should be. Yes, I know there are lots of how-to-write books out there. This one is going to be different.  For one, his how-to travel guide to Portland is some of his best work. Even if you never go to Portland (and I'd argue you'll never go to the Portland in Fugitives and Refugees because it doesn't exist anymore), it's a great read.

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