writing
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The Art of Homage
But what if your entire book is based on another one? What if a certain piece of information (in the cases of these books, a writer or a specific novel) is foundational to your text? How, then, should you proceed?…
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The Persistence and Procrastination of Artists
How much time should be spent on a single work of art? Or inversely, how will the amount of time spent on a work ultimately shape what that work will become and what it will mean to the creator? What…
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Writer Reading Grants
Writers often find grants to help them write, but writers also need to read. The Luminaries author Eleanor Catton, last year’s winner of the Man Booker Prize, plans to set money aside to award grants to writers to allow them…
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Leaving Out the Details
Tobias Carroll, writing over at Electric Literature, considers the level of detail authors use to create worlds in fiction. Some writers are known for sparse, minimalistic writing. Others leave out key details in a way that adds meaning to the story.…
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Maintaining Human Life
Writing may be hard work, but it isn’t the kind that pays the bills. Tillie Olsen’s seminal Silences wonders just what kind of work writing really is, and who has the privilege to do it: Though access to education has…
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The Game of Writing
“WRITER: THE GAME is a not-for-profit writing lifestyle simulator created by Matthew Burnside, the goal of which is to be a productive writer without succumbing to soul-crushing rejection or the wicked diversions of the internet” Yes, that’s exactly it: an online…
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Drought-Stricken Literature
“And a new literature of drought may be emerging—one with room for stories that recall the past, but also for the possibility of trouble on a scale we’ve never seen before” According to Anna North, water—or rather the lack there…
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The Internet Hates Female Writers
More than 5 percent of the messages a woman receives online will be abusive or derogatory in nature, on average. Piers Morgan, whom researchers rank as the No. 1 receiver of hate tweets per day, gets 8.4 percent negative comments…
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Distractions and the Art of Creation
Alexandra Wuest, writing at HTMLGIANT, looks at the distinction between procrastination and the useful distraction that is a necessary part of the creative act: Somewhere between the initial conception of an idea and the completion of the project exists a…
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Writing Blind
Writing and revising can be challenging under the best of circumstances, but imaging being unable to see the words on the page. At The Airship Daily, Tammy Ruggles writes about her life as a visually impaired writer: Before the computer…
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The Last Laugh
Memoirist (and former editor-at-large of McSweeney’s) Sean Wilsey talks to The Atlantic about his essay collection, More Curious, and why humor writing resonates: I think there’s something dishonest about writing that isn’t funny. I can’t engage with a piece of work without an element of humor…
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The Rumpus Interview with Dani Shapiro
Author Dani Shapiro talks about her latest book, Still Writing, MFA vs. NYC vs. life in bucolic CT, and the lure of Internet.