Confessions of a Cranky Lit-Mag Editor
Peter Selgin edits Alimentum: The Literature of Food and, like most editors, he has a few bones to pick with the folks who fill up his mailbox. His article, The X Files: Confessions of a Cranky Lit-Mag Editor appears in the May/June 2006 issue of Poets & Writers. In the piece, Selgin offers some worthwhile advice…
continue readingPracticing the Art of Imitation
In a post some months ago, I wrote about Nicholas Delbanco’s great ideas concerning imitation of the fiction masters. In his essay, Delbanco argues that copying the greats can be an incredibly educational experience. I recently came across the same concept, this time in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the…
continue readingOn Revision
From Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life: “Revision is when you first get to recognize the distance between what you wanted to write, what you thought you were writing, and what you actually did write. That recognition often makes you want to throw up.”
continue readingDeconstructing The Moment
We all know that turning point, the key moment, maybe it’s the climax, maybe we call it the crucial moment, or maybe we just leave it unnamed, but we all know it should be there. That pivot in your story whene a character faces a hinge in his life and nothing will ever be the same.…
continue readingIn Defense of Outlining
And here’s a tip for how you can improve that execution… It’s very fashionable to say you don’t plot out your stories before writing them. And it’s certainly the epitome of geekdom to even allow the word “outline” to fall from your lips. It seems very few writers will admit to outlining their work, and…
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