I am in a book club that just throws a book at you at a club meeting, and it’s the book you’re meant to read for the next club. There is no preamble, no warning, no sneak peek. Sometimes this works for me, and sometimes it baffles me: should I read this book? I know…
I would say that there’s no way to divide a room like bringing up AI, but politics, so you know… I’m bringing up AI. (Not politics.) Though you, my friends, are readers and writers, so you might tend more one way than the other. Perhaps. Do I hate AI? Do I love it? Do I…
Ryan North’s To Be or Not to Be is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is also a CYOA (choose your own adventure) book, but not the trademarked version of that. North’s publishers call it a “Chooseable-Path Adventure.” It is not North’s first Chooseable-Path Adventure adaptation. It is my second read of a Hamlet…
It’s poetry month! And as a result, I will be reading some poetry. Funnily enough, the first book of poetry I read was not poetry at all. It was flash fiction. It is such a slim volume, and I bought it at the same time as these other books of poetry on my shelf (about…
It’s silly that I am only blogging about this now. But let’s assume that you are interested in hearing about a fellowship experience at a writing (craft) conference; you don’t care how long ago I actually did the thing. For what it’s worth, it is now April 2025. I went to Martha’s Vineyard in June…
I have addressed some of the drama surrounding NaNoWriMo in the past year to two years. But not really, because I have been a little confused about it while not knowing enough to hold some emotionally-charged opinion (which others seem willing to do). I have been a participant (and winner) of NaNoWriMo in the past,…
I am going to convince you that sometimes quitting is exactly what you need to do. In this instance, I quit before I even started. At the same time, I visited a local bookstore (Posman Books in Atlanta) and bought a magnet that says, “Never never never give up,” which is supposedly a Winston Churchill…
As far as Thanksgiving reading recommendations go, I have nothing different to recommend from last year. My favorite Thanksgiving-esque book is Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, by Laurie Colwin. It doubles as a cookbook, at least a little. And many of the recipes are perfect for this time of year. Beyond that, I…
I am ten days behind reminding you that it is time to start planning for Nanowrimo. So you better get on it. I have been deep, deep in edits, but thankfully I am going to write the second half of the novel I started last Nano in November, so I don’t have a ton of…
Way back in the spring, I went to a writing conference and didn’t tell. I wrote some notes for you, typed them up, and then got too busy with reviews and other things to share what it was like. North Carolina has a good writing network. I mean, there might be better, but there is…
It was just a normal day and I was just driving my ’17 Forester (named Smokey) along the Triangle freeways and highways when the latest episode of The Writer Files came up on my podcast player. I was like okay, that sounds good, and Kelton Reid started telling me (in his deep, dulcet, and mellow…
It has been the world’s slowest burn through homeschool and other things, but I do get noticed, more acknowledgment (and my network grows) with each week, each month, each year. I get people wanting to send ARCs on a regular basis, now. I get comments on the blog more than I used to. I even…
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor is bleak and difficult stuff. I was just drooling over it for its clarity, cleanness, style, innovation and trend-setting… but was dying inside due to its content. Satirical down to the word, nothing and no one in the world of the South in the early…
If you had told me several years ago that I would start reading romance novels, I would have scoffed at you. While I read nearly every genre out there, there are some genres that I just don’t. (Okay, so I always make exceptions for great literature, no matter the genre—I guess unless it’s too hard…
Sure, a fever dream. Absurdism, related—in time and space and feeling—to DeLillo’s White Noise, which I read last month. But sometimes clear, or clear enough. Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate was not a collected book of poetry like I would expect. I mean, its meanings were hidden enough (sometimes so deep I…
I have just started reading Don Delillo’s White Noise for a literary classics book club. On chapter six, at page 22, I came across this scene. I knew it would never make it whole into my quotes from the book, but I also knew that–despite this book maybe not being what I am totally into–this…
“Yeah, I am the least athletic person in the universe, but I compare writing to training for a sport. You have to do it every single day and nobody cares about your effort or how much time you spent or how much was wasted time. It doesn’t matter. It’s the end of the performance that…
What can I say? I smelled my hand the other day and came up with this first line and thought I would give it to the world as a writing prompt. You can write it down word for word and write from there. You can rephrase it (change the POV or tone or something) and…
“Literary miracles are the work of writers who come closer than other writers to expressing what is on their minds through innate genius augmented by control, technique, craft…” -Matthew J. Bruccoli in his introduction to The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
A couple weeks ago, I was listening to a writing podcast (Write-Minded) and there was an interview with an author (Tzivia Gover) who uses dreams to write (and teaches classes on using your dreams to write). In the course of the interview, the interviewer and interviewee touched on the subject of writer’s block, a subject…
the starving artist 