Revision Scream Queen
Every now and then, I reach out to writing friends and classmates I haven’t talked to in a while. Part of the reason is to ensure they’re not dead on the toilet*. None of them are dead, they’re just busy…
Category: The Writing Life
Knitting Stories (and Sweaters)
I’ve become a knitter. I’ve learned alongside my mentor, Stacie, who says things like, “It’s not hard. It’s just about making loops. Loops and loops.” Over the past year, I’ve progressed from making scarves to knitting a sweater, which I’m…
Scents and Sensibility
I lost nearly all my sense of smell when I was eight. One day my socks itched and the next day I was allergic to seemingly everything including “all grasses in the world,” the grim doctor intoned, putting the kybosh…
When the Black Dog Bites: How to Write When You’re Depressed
The cliché of the depressed writer can seem almost romantic to someone who has never tried to put pen to paper or been in the thrall of senseless emotional suffering. But for those of us who wish to write, depression…
And So We’ve Come to the End (of the year, that is)
You won’t find a Best of/Worst of post over here at Dead Darlings headquarters. We’re too tired from writing and revisioning and meeting class deadlines. Instead we decided to toast the new year by asking our writing colleagues to lift…
Drunk Texting My Novel: When ‘Baby I Miss You Please Come Back What Went Wrong Between Us We Used to Have So Much Fun Together and BTW Are You Horny Tonight?’ is a Summary of Your Entire Revision Process.
You are living the dream. People like your novel-in-progress. Some even love it. You certainly love it, and know deep down that it will always love you back. There’s just one problem: Trusted Reader (who also happens to be a…