writing advice
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Why MFA?: The Rumpus Interview with Tom Kealey and Robin Tung
Tom Kealey and Robin Tung on why they advocate for prospective MFA students, the MFA application process, and why we pursue MFAs in the first place.
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Don’t Throw the Clichés out with the Bath Water
Most people think clichés aren’t worth a hill of beans, but over at Salon, Orin Hargraves says they just haven’t gotten a fair shake. Hargraves thinks clichés are just a red herring; if you want to make sure your writing…
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Nights to Remember
I offer all of this not by way of aimless self-revelation, but as a way of provoking you to remember your stories about similar incidents in your life, stories about the night, and who smoked what and who was doing who…
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Write like an Assassin
I have to remind myself that all is permissible. Art has to be a free space. Language has to be a free space. And I just shouldn’t worry about that kind of thing while I’m working. I might pay the…
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Living Life Improves Writing
Good writing comes not just from learning craft and reading books, but from accumulated life experiences, argues Rachel Jelinek aver at the The Missouri Review. The quality of those experiences aren’t necessarily defined by how exotic they are, either. Learning…
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Hold Nothing Back
Worried you are too young to be working on a memoir? Worried you are revealing too many deep dark secrets and your relatives will disown you forever? Author Gary Shteyngart, 41—which he says is 74 in Russian years—shares some words…
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Learning Curves
Have you ever regretted the way in which you once wrote? In this week’s New York Times “Bookends” column, Anna Holmes and Leslie Jamison take this question on. A few early mistakes, as listed by Holmes: Inserting myself into reported narratives…
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Not Writing to Write Better
Julia Fierro has a debut novel Cutting Teeth, but for much of the last decade, the writer was so dispirited by the rejection of her first manuscript that she stopped writing. Instead, she launched Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, a Brooklyn-based writing…
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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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The Book You’re Writing
In the latest installment of Little, Brown’s “Ask a Debut Novelist,” Ted Thompson addresses the anxieties that spring eternal from the minds of new writers, perfectionism and the specter of Zadie Smith’s superior talent among them. While quality is certainly a…
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How to Write (for Actual Legal Tender)
Over at The Awl, Heather Havrilesky, a writer without an MFA, has some humorous and candid freelancing tips for her MFA students and us readers. Havrilesky knows we’ll appreciate this advice, since she’s “one of the only writers [her] students know…
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Insert Short Story Here
[Beginning in media res in mother’s house.] [Sufficiently dramatic exposition with an obvious, planted echo to the story’s climax.] Story in need of kindling? Take a gander at this short story template from McSweeney’s. Use it as a guide— —Ok.…