My Legacy of Lying
I come from a long line of liars. My grandfather, a Russian potato farmer, was conscripted into the army in World War I to serve on the eastern front. Most of the soldiers couldn’t read or write, but my grandfather…
Category: The Writing Life
Confessions of a Chronic On-the-Job Writer
By Guest Contributor Anonymous Hi. I’m writing this blog post at work. A few months ago, I revised the final draft of my first novel right here at my desk, and since then, I’ve been writing short stories, drafting novel…
Friday Feast: Why We Need More Novels About Work; Bookmobiles in Southern Appalachia; Gay book, Indian Book, or Diverse Book; Our New Librarian of Congress; and a New Documentary Explores the Billion-Dollar Romance Novel Industry
I’ve heard folk say work novels won’t sell because no one wants to read about the thing they’re trying to escape. Personally, I love to read about workplaces. The crazier the better. Without working lives depicted in narratives, I assume…
Writing While Poor: Chasing the Dream You Know You Can’t Have
When author circles inevitably talk about what it is they need to write—two hours of Pilates, a stiff glass of Johnnie Walker Blue, a nap—I go quiet in a squirmy kind of way. When I’m told I should really travel…
Love the Query: 3 Tips, 12 Stages of Despair, and 1 Playlist
Fail Faster, Succeed Quicker The first time I saw “Fail faster, succeed quicker,” I was at an MIT robotics convention. Don’t ask. The idea being each failure teaches one to design a better experiment–or novel. More failures means more learning…
We Each Have Our Own Yoknapatawpha
By Guest Contributor Virginia Pye We all know writers with unpublished manuscripts hidden in desk drawers. Successful authors often admit to a half dozen failed, boxed-away books. Emily Dickinson bundled her poems with string and placed them under her bed….