Grief And Hamlet
“My grief has been all the usual and varied colours of sadness and madness. It has been searing, voluptuous, numbing. I foresaw that it would be — I have been…
Posts by tag
writing
377 posts
Write That Damn Novel
I don’t know about you but this is the year I finish that @#$#@%! novel. I got two hundred pages of rough stuff. Real rough stuff. The first novel. The…
Honoring an Amazing Writer and Father
“He had raised three of us single-handedly following my mother’s premature death when we were five, seven and nine. It was the 60s, when single fathers didn’t do that sort…
The Rumpus Interview with McSweeney’s Publisher Oscar Villalon
“These things, writing and reading, are never, I don’t think were ever, ever meant to be exclusive from anything else. I think they were always meant to be part of…
Tobias Wolff On Short Stories
“(T)he only real people left who write short stories now are people who write literary short stories, if you will. And they are a little more demanding than the average…
Breaking: Writers Are Eccentric And Enjoy Bathtubs, Charts
The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed a bunch of writers to see how they do it. Of course, they called it “How to Write a Great Novel,” but I’m not…
Are We Talking About Sex Differently?
My girlfriend is reading Henry Miller, we’re applying for food stamps and I’m having nightmares about children having died in my house. I spent the last weekend partying in Al…
Letters Home
Writing by hand does remind you, primally, of what this crazy thing we do is made of. The careful spilling of ink on paper, the joints and girders of letters.…
Your Occasional Roundup Of Death
Writing and reading does me a lot of good because it acquaints me with death in totally vicarious ways. Which is good, because I love life more than I know…
“My Worst Mistake? Getting Sick of My Work”
Fiction writer Michelle Wittle got so tired of going over her short story that she just sent the damn thing out, assuming it had no typos. Oops. Of course, this…
Depression May Be Beneficial (For Writers)
“Yet some scientists are suggesting that depression — peculiarly prevalent for a mental disorder — is not a malfunction at all, but an evolutionary adaptation, a state of mind which…
The Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
This week, the book blogs are full of answers. Listen to them. Vonnegut knew why we are all such drama queens (there are charts involved). A thought-provoking take on writing…