Jun 29
jmeshornLiterature, philosophy, random philosophy, questions, time travel, writing
I watched this bad time travel movie (I forget the title). It did pose what turns out to be an interesting question. In the film the characters have come up with an idea and written it down. This idea will make them rich, famous and culturally significant. There are time travelers who kill culturally significant people just after they make their greatest creation (you know, so we wouldn’t have to put up with the last fifteen years of Billy Joel).
Anyway, our heroes are faced with a choice: they can destroy their creation (forgoing fame, fortune and a sort of immortality) and live or they can refuse and die at that moment, knowing that their work will live on for centuries.
As writers how would we deal with that. What if you just wrote THE novel. The thing that would live on for generations after you, but the only way to avoid immediate death was to destroy it? What would you do?
Jun 04
ValerieLiterature, Web Goodies, writing ben brooks, inspiration, mudlucious press, seizures, writing
three things
my copy of an island of fifty arrived in my eager mailbox yesterday. if you haven’t read any of mr. ben brooks well then, my opinion of you just collided with rock bottom. redeem yourself over at mudluscious – buy dope words for your reading pleasure. get high on life and the new wave brit lit. a aha ha ha. don’t stab me. more on island of fifty later…give me time to finish reading it, jeez.
thing two: as of late, my entire self has been tethered to a seemingly insurmountable writer’s block. i am humming ‘we shall overcome’ as i type this. in looking for ideas to wrap my head around i stumbled upon Ptak Science Books. posts such as ‘leashed women’ and ‘visualizing the 100 hour work week of the 1947 housewife’ – light my fire, as in, spark my mostly unsparkable interest. there is even an entire category for ‘writing systems’ : so much fun for a word geek like me, i had to share with all you lovelies.
lastly, have a seizure to this:
May 10
nate InnomiCraft, TWAK, guns, writing assault rifle, fucking trigger, literary magazine, pseudo-intellectual, writing
This generation of social media and electronic over-stimuli isn’t do you any favors, twenty-first century writer. All this technology is at your fingertips and you’re caught up with writing on your friends walls. Spending your time punching links and “liking” bullshit isn’t getting your writing career anywhere fast – or anywhere at all. It’s time to drop the status updates and write something substantial.
This isn’t basic anymore; this is a war zone.
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May 06
jmeshornCraft, Literature, writing questions, writing
So, what’s the point of writing? When I write I have no thought of publishing (I rarely get published). I do it for me. Therapy, I guess. I am my audience. I have no belief that I will ever make a living at it. Nor do I care. I can survive on my sales job for as long as I need to. Big question after the jump.
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Apr 20
Nathan TyreeCraft, Literature, writing Craft, critics, writing
When you write something, can you tell if it’s any good? See, I’m never sure. Maybe I’m stylistically tone deaf or something. I always doubt the quality of my own work. To know that something I’ve written is good, I need feedback. I get feedback from trusted (honest) friends. I get it from my writing workshop. Then, once I’m convinced that it must be at least workable, I send it out into the world. If an editor likes it enough to publish it, then I assume that it was at least okay. If it keeps getting rejected over and over, I conclude that it is bad and it goes into a special folder. That folder is a writing purgatory. Sometimes a piece gets pulled from it, re-worked and makes it to the good pile.
So, do you know if your writing is good? If so, how?
Mar 23
P. H. MadoreLiterature blake butler, jimmy chen, labor, lit drift, roxane gay, scott mclanahan, sweat, the jungle, the new york times, truman capote, upton sinclair, work, writing
There isn’t much interesting about being a professor or whatever sweatless position most writers of literary fiction inhabit. I’ve 
always felt that sweating for my dinner freed up my mind to write about the day later. Of course these days, being a government employee, I rarely do any such thing, and it’s been fucking murder on my creativity. Before going on, it’s important to annotate the previous and fomenting writings on this topic: this snippet at Lit Drift and this essay in the New York Times. I want to take a moment to clarify that to say “at” is appropriate when speaking of a website, and to say “in” is appropriate when speaking of a newspaper, but to use them interchangeably should probably only be done when you’re being funny. And you’re not very funny.
Now, now, moving on.
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Mar 22
katiemooreArt, Film, Music, Web Goodies, humor, writing Art, creativity, humor, Music, organization, panic, shekhar kapur, ted, writing
For Shekhar Kapur, it seems to be sheer panic.
http://www.ted.com/talks/shekhar_kapur_we_are_the_stories_we_tell_ourselves.html
I can’t help but agree, and I find myself wishing that my creativity came from a calmer, perhaps more organized place. So I’m wondering, is it like this for all of us? Where does your creativity come from?
Mar 16
valeriewalter78writing audience, taboo, writing
powering through my google reader yesterday there was this from the compelling wonder that is xtx (yeah i provided the link but you are all cool people and i’m certain you already know the deal).
the deal: xtx takes a mostly untouchable taboo* and caresses it with her lovely linguistic prowess and we indulge and cheer and drool hungrily for more.
(*taboo as far as the general readership, being such cool people we are drawn toward all hot things we’ve been warned not to touch.)
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Mar 13
Nathan TyreeCraft, Literature, Publishing, poetry, promotion, writing Bukowski, fame, persona, promotion, writing
There’s a poem by Bukowski that I love. It’s about a bluebird that lives in his heart. Tough ole Hank aint gonna let that bluebird show itself. He says:
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