Where I’ve Laid My Head
I have slept in 26 locations in the last seven months. This was never my intention, this peripatetic life, but looking back now at the age of 40, I can finally see I have been doing it for decades.
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Posts Tagged: writing
CONVERSATIONS WITH LITERARY EX-CONS: Neil White
Fifteen years after serving my time, I still think about prison and the ways in which it might have affected me.
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Drinking the Seagull
At the end of his first day on the raft, as the light dwindled to nothing and the chill of night settled around him, did he close his eyes and wish for sleep, wish for dreaming, wish to somehow be transported home to his family, or at least away from the open sea?
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Seeking Grace in Strange Places
I am not a religious person. I usually tell people, if they ask, that I’m a secular humanist, because religion plays no part in my life. And mostly, this is true. In my non-writing life, that is.
...more“Produce more, consume less”
Another Reason to Know Your Grammar
Only a week ago, we blogged about the fluidity of the English language. However, for those of you currently seeking a job, take note: grammar is important.
While some of you may scoff or shrug your shoulders, Kyle Wiens, writing for Harvard Business Review, is not messing around:
...moreIf you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me.
“Twitter For Authors”
The LA Times reports that Twitter has released a how-to-manual titled “Twitter for Authors.”
The guide details six tips particularly geared towards writers, some of which include the not-so-helpful “Be Authentic, Be Yourself,” and “Above All, Have Fun.” Nowadays many authors use the social networking site as a means of self-promotion, and entire transcontinental book clubs have sprung from its 140 character limit.
...more‘WRITE OR DIE’ AND OTHER SAGE WORDS OF ADVICE
The Guardian profiles a series of computer applications meant to motivate authors through the doldrums of writer’s block.
‘Write or Die’ (whose slightly menacing slogan is “putting the ‘Prod’ back in Productivity”) deletes your writing if you pause for more than forty-five seconds, while apps like ‘Freedom’ effectively shut down modes of procrastination, prohibiting you from viewing sites of refuge like Twitter and Facebook.
...moreArt as Witness
“I believe Nina Simone tried to build that gun because that night she realized what all other-ed bodies eventually realize: a gun was already at her head. She feared a song might not be enough. The fact that this gun could not be seen didn’t make it any less real or lethal.
...moreWriting for the Ear
“Language can still be an adventure if we remember that words can make a kind of melody. In novels, news stories, memoirs and even to-the-point memos, music is as important as meaning. In fact, music can drive home the meaning of words.”
Constance Hale continues her New York Times series with a lesson on the sound of the sentence.
...moreSuper Sad True Habits
The second installment of “Super Sad True Habits of Highly Effective Writers” features a number of our friends, including contributor Chloe Caldwell, and Adam Levin, whose novel The Instructions was a Rumpus Book Club selection.
Here’s Nick Flynn on his pre-writing ritual:
“Before I sit down, I need time to wander in the unknown for awhile, either psychically or physically, somewhat aimlessly, yet in a state of awareness, allowing seeming distractions to build up some energy, maybe around an image or idea or sound, until something reveals itself: a pattern, an echo, something that resonates with whatever it is I think I’m supposed to be working on.”
...moreMemory Excavation
Guernica examines the intersections of science, emotion, and memory by way of an exchange between novelist Rivka Galchen and neuroscience professor David Linden, featured in the Rubin Museum’s Brainwave series.
“As Linden explains in his book, ‘memory retrieval is an active and dynamic process.’ Thus recollecting past experiences—reliving them again and again or retelling them to others—subtly modifies the memories we keep.
...moreFirst Agent
At The Quivering Pen, Emily St. John Mandel remembers her first agent who, even in death, remains part of Mandel’s audience.
“She comes back to me at odd moments. When there are small triumphs, I sometimes find myself thinking that I wish she could have seen this; when there are small disappointments I sometimes think of her too, of how dry and reassuring she was when things weren’t going quite as one had hoped.”
...more“Super Sad True Habits”
At Tin House, Rumpus contributor Courtney Maum introduces us to the writing habits of “highly effective writers.” Part-one features many people we love, including Rumpus essays editor Roxane Gay and columnist Steve Almond.
...moreReal Talk from Your Editor
Check out this amazing Tumblr. The Rumpus editorial board is particularly fond of this one: When all of the important national mag awards go to white dudes.
(Via Xtina Richards)
...more“Mistakes Were Made”
At The New York Times, Constance Hale continues her writing lessons series with an exploration of the appropriate uses and pitfalls of the notorious passive voice.
“…Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice.
...more“Perimeter-less Perimeters”
Believer co-founder and co-editor Heidi Julavitz writes about how online journals (such as The Rumpus!) caused the Believer to rethink some of its original tenets, including a strong resistance to virtualization.
“Ultimately we risked losing readers, and we risked losing writers, too.
...moreAlexander Chee Interview
Grub Daily has a micro-interview with Alexander Chee. The author discusses the hardest writing criticism to give and receive, strange reader interactions, Middle-Earth, advice for would-be writers, and what he looks for in a new work.
“As a reader, I am something of a thrill-seeker.
...moreZen and the Art of Pencil-Sharpening
I saw David Rees read once. The event was about politics; it was to introduce a political book whose title I have regrettably forgotten. (I went to support another friend.) I’d never heard of Rees before but he made an impression.
...moreMake-or-Break
Constance Hale’s New York Times series of writing lessons continues with wisdom on verbs.
“Verbs kick-start sentences: Without them, words would simply cluster together in suspended animation. We often call them action words, but verbs also can carry sentiments (love, fear, lust, disgust), hint at cognition (realize, know, recognize), bend ideas together (falsify, prove, hypothesize), assert possession (own, have) and conjure existence itself (is, are).”
...more“No, I’m the Narrator”
At The New York Times, author and Rumpus contributor Jami Attenberg writes about the the disorientation and fear that came when, after a break-up, her ex-boyfriend started a site about her.
“Creating the blog might have been his grasp at taking control of our story, but it was also his attempt to speak to me in my language, or on my platform anyway.”
...moreRejection Practice
“The Rejection Generator rejects writers before an editor looks at a submission. Inspired by psychological research showing that after people experience pain they are less afraid of it in the future, The Rejection Generator helps writers take the pain out of rejection.”
Here’s a handy tool to support “rejection immunity” and ease the fear of sending submissions into the wild.
...moreTumbling Tips
Word Choices
At The New York Times, Constance Hale contributes a series of writing lessons. Her latest entry, “Desperately Seeking Synonyms,” zeroes in on the complexities of nouns.
“The best writers combine killer nouns and adjectives, and they can make dawn — or any other sky — surprising.”
...moreCharged Sentences
“It is by fussing with sentences that a character becomes clear to me, that a plot unfolds. To work on them so compulsively, perhaps prematurely, is to see the trees before the forest. And yet I am incapable of conceiving the forest any other way.”
At The New York Times, Jhumpa Lahiri reflects on the centrality of the sentence in her reading and writing processes.
...moreThe Untidy World
“In truth, memory’s great betrayal, that it will not lie intact in wait for us, is lament enough to revisit in every generation. This is what I go to nonfiction for, the way we pick at the scab, poke our finger in the wound of memory’s fickle and existential transience, and the inconvenience of our desire to make things whole and right.”
At Brevity, Liz Stephens reflects on fact and nonfiction, articulating her loss of trust in John D’Agata’s narrative nonfiction, which she examines by way of a contrast to David Shields’ Reality Hunger, and none other than Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life.”
...moreA Memorandum of Ghosts
Outside my window in Chicago it is snowing. I am overlooking a back yard that looks like a New England forest. Pine trees and garden bridges, amber soil and dirty snow. Snow that only looks that way after a January rain.
Book Publishing Hierarchy
We also make an exception for a list if it’s really funny, and we’re on it. Hence: Paul Bogaards’ “Hierarchy of Book Publishing: The Top 100.”
...moreMessing with Memoir
When my memoir went out of print, it was as if someone had thrown a stray puppy onto my doorstep. Dazed, mangy, with a tendency to pee on the rug, this orphaned book was something I couldn’t shoo away, or worse, put down, but also something I didn’t have any room for in my life.
Prompts in Your Box
Online writing community Figment has recently inaugurated Figment Daily Themes, “a free daily email service through which subscribers receive a thoughtful, compelling writing prompt five days a week.” Occasionally, prompts will come from acclaimed authors such as Curtis Sittenfeld, Aimee Bender, and Nell Freudenberger.
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