the writing life
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Is Writing About Writing Really Forbidden?
Over at Electric Literature, Kristopher Jansma wonders why we tell students to avoid writing about writing. Perhaps, he suggests, we tell students not to write about writing because we think they should be going out and getting new experiences to…
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Super Hot Prof-on-Student Word Sex: Along Came Polly
I taught Polly at Tin House one year. Or maybe she taught me.
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The Priestly Writer
I write for many of the same reasons that I wanted to become a priest. I want to bear witness to a sacramental vision. I want to admit my life as a sinner. Rather than judge others, I want to…
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But is Poetry a Job?
Over at the Poetry Foundation, Patricia Lockwood considers whether or not poetry is real work: Is it work, though? The question persists. Is a single muscle exerted during the process? Do you sweat at all, besides the weird thing that sometimes…
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Twelve Years, One Book Later
Another testament to the tribulations of novel-making: over at the New Yorker, Akhil Sharma discusses the particular technical problems he faced while writing Family Life as well as how, exactly, he went about solving them. The book took twelve and a…
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Writing “the very stuff of life”
Today in unusual writing jobs: an inside look at what it’s like to be an obituary news writer for the New York Times. Each day, it is our job to come to know such strangers intimately, inhaling their lives through…
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Jane Austen Would Be Eating Top Ramen Too
With writers, it’s usually neither rags to riches nor riches to rags. Marx had Engels, Austen had her family. Read this and rest assured: some cool people lived with their parents. Austen didn’t start out rich and she never got…
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On Writing and Uncertainty
Is writing a fundamentally speculative act? This is one of the questions Jenny Offill was asked in an interview with the Paris Review. Offill discusses the uncertainty that comes with being a writer, working constantly at a craft that can never…
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From Writer to Realtor
Famed slam poet Maggie Estep passed away suddenly in February. Over at The Billfold, Rumpus contributor Sari Botton laments the decline of the publishing industry and the need for writers like Estep to enter into real estate: It was a little…
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Money Problems
Reading, writing and thinking are all tasks that are nearly impossible to cultivate while performing manual labor. As Plato first noted, when discussing education, “sleep and exercise are unpropitious to learning,” and therefore students should avoid intense exercise as they…
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Pitching from A to Z
The second installment of Nicole Dieker’s series on life as a full-time freelance writer is up at The Billfold, and this time she’s talking about pitching essays (and getting paid for them). The post includes useful tips on how to pitch,…
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Dispatches from a Real-Life, Full-Time Freelance Writer
Over at The Billfold, writer Nicole Dieker kicks off a new series on all aspects of life as a full-time freelancer. In her first installment, she covers the four different types of paid assignments and how her personal writing projects…