Category: essay
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The Inner Loop reading series
I had a great evening under twilit stars – and frequent, seemingly aimless helicopters – with The Inner Loop, a monthly DC reading series for poetry, fiction and non-fiction writers, at Colony Club. The headliner was Jennifer Atkinson, a poet drawn to human disaster, with readings by Joel Goldberg, Matthew Moniz, Alyssa Oursler, Alex Aronovich,…
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Sexual tension in fiction
My guest post for the Fictorians, a site on writing fiction, discusses sexual tension and its different roles in different stories. It’s part of the Fictorians’ month-long Tension series. Read it at: http://www.fictorians.com/2017/02/24/sexual-tension-in-fiction/
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Sticking to my knitting (opinions)
As Facebook gently reminded me — my professional media have been stale. It was less a writer’s block than a blind alley. Perhaps others will find my thinking instructive. Like everybody, I have opinions about the world, and in these contentious times, it’s very tempting to share them. Everyone else is, and I talk prettier than…
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Love your pile of words (first drafts)
I love my current first draft. This is a shocking and unfashionable thing to say. Everyone laments their first draft. It is the shoals of mediocrity on which our dreams founder, or at least so tells every clickbait online writing workshop. Complaining about the horror of that first draft is required. Even really successful and…
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Regaining the writing habit (hours not words)
I think it’s official now: I have fallen out of the habit of writing. I don’t mean to say “I’m not writing” or #amwriting – just that over the past year it’s been an ad-hoc effort, when the mood takes me. I’m not in a panic – I have a new project, and I am…
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Make time for new work
My main creative work since my book contract has either been editing my manuscript or developing my (approach to) social media. By any commercial measure, that’s what I should have done. Polishing and sharing best honors my creative expression. One has creative intention too, and each success makes one’s ground more fertile. Recently my editor Vivian…
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Books at AwesomeCon need flair
AwesomeCon‘s sales and promotional floor is so big that guides and maps never refer to it as a unit bound by walls, only to its subsections. All of it is dense with visual stimulus and novelty. Vendors sell comics, books, movies, posters, toys, models, clothing and accessories, even niche products like leather bondage wear or rings…
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On anger
The Promised Land, and its malcontents. In the story of Moses, the aging Moses needs water for his people. Jehovah tells Moses to speak to a rock, but Moses strikes the rock twice. Jehovah lets the water flow, so the Jews can drink, but the cost is that Moses can’t enter the Promised Land. This…
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Twenty lousy minutes on the Freewrite (review)
Less tool than fetish, and disappointing. Funded on Kickstarter, the new Freewrite is a solid, lovingly-crafted device that promises to return writers to a place of distraction-free spontaneity. From its low-power e-ink screen to the aluminum case – with handle – to the deep-traveling satisfyingly-clicky Cherry keys, the Freewrite consciously recalls early computers, manual typewriters,…
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A Republican Hamlet
Blame the English teachers at those fine expensive schools, trying desperately to engage their bored charges with a play about reckless youth. If only the chattering classes had been taught how to read Hamlet properly, they might have better understood this year’s presidential primaries. Let’s do a Republican Hamlet. Best thing is, you don’t have…