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They say two wrongs don't make a right, but what about countless wrongs piled one on top of another like corpses on the battlefield? Please don't misconstrue-- this isn't some crackpot justification of genocide. We're not talking the 2+2=5 of politics or religion, here. "How many lights do you see?" "I see four lights." "No, there are five." Nothing like that. What we're talking about is the evolution of words over time-- specifically due to their chronic misuse, mispronunciation, and misspelling.

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Header image and flowchart by Rob Young

No one starts as a brilliant writer. Before we reach any visible level of success, we leave a trail of bloody, mangled manuscripts behind us. It's only once we admit our shame in this past work that we can move on to pieces with greater potential. But where is that dividing line? At what point should you revise your project and when is it time to throw the whole thing under your lawnmower?

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…every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it. 

Gather around you commies, pervs, pederasts, peepers, weenie waggers, dimebag dirtballs, junkies and used car salesmen.

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For this column, I thought I’d try something a little different as we get towards the end of the year. There will be all kinds of “top ten” lists coming out in November and December, so I’m going to cobble together some of my favorite authors, the ones that I’m betting most of you have never heard of before.

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Twitter, NaNoWriMo and blogging are activities writers now take for granted. But spin back two decades and blogging would have been easily confused with something people did behind the steamy windshields of cars. It's hard to imagine how we spent our time in the dark days before Wordpress; it's even harder to work out whether the time and effort spent on some of the activities we take for granted is justified.