Sorting Through the Red Pencil Marks
Australian Max Barry, author of Syrup and Jennifer Government has a great blog where he ruminates on writerly matters as well as other topics such as his impending fatherhood. On this site, he has an interesting bit about getting comments back from his editor and having to decipher all the editor-speak. Several weeks ago, Barry…
continue readingBoD: Controlled Burn
Drawing rave blurbs from Richard Ford, Anthony Sofford, and George Pelecanos, Controlled Burn: Stories of Prison, Crime, and Men by Scott Wolvern straddles the line between the best of mystery/noir writing and literary fiction. Publishers Weekly conjured up the ubiquitous Hemingway reference for Wolven’s spare, unadorned prose and his boxing characters; but he’s also been…
continue readingWriterisms to Avoid
You all don’t need this, but its here, just to say we told you so. Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find ’em, root ’em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush. am, is, are, was, were, being, be, been ?Ķ combined with “by” or with “by ?Ķ someone” implied…
continue readingSome Art School/Workshop Teacher Should’ve Put a Stop to this Nonsense Long Ago
In 1994, musician Todd Snider skewered the grunge rock movement with his satire Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues. The song made fun of the whole alternative scene where all you had to do was buy a flannel shirt, let the hair dangle down in your eyes, and act depressed and you’d make a million dollars.…
continue readingHilarious Headline
I have to admit that I’m still learning the snarky-jokey-witty turn of a phrase that characterizes most blogs. I try to play it straight until my inner comedian just can’t be restrained. But although I don’t do the jokey thing all that well, here is an AMAZINGLY hilarious title. First, lemme tell you about the…
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