I’m rereading Roberto Bolano’s 2666, and I love this passage so much I’m going to share it with you: “It was raining in the quadrangle, and the quadrangular sky looked like the grimace of a robot or a god made in our own likeness. The oblique drops of rain slid down the blades of grass […]
This is from “Making a Literary Life,” by Carolyn See: “Your ego is a big, messy, undisciplined, anxiety-ridden dog. It barks and whines and pees on the floor and sheds all over the furniture and takes nips at passing strangers and goes crazy when it see another dog that might be bigger or smarter or […]
Spend four hours reading your novel. Feel abjectly depressed about its suckitude. Wrestle with 1) the feeling that you should give it up 2) the feeling that you have nothing else going for you. Mope around the house. Frown at your twins. Rethink your life and career. Consider being a house husband and nothing else. […]
If you’ve ever wanted to play a first-person game based on Thoreau’s Walden, here’s your chance. The teaser below shows some clips from the game where you try to live like Thoreau:
From an article by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker about whether or not to go to Graduate School: Last week, one of my college friends, who now manages vast sums at a hedge fund, visited me. He’s the most rational person I know, so I asked him how he would go about deciding whether to […]
Peter Levine recently published “The Appearance of a Hero,” a collection of linked short stories revolving around the central character of Tom Mahoney. In an unusual move, none of the stories are told from Tom’s perspective, but only from the perspective of those surrounding him. It’s really a fantastic collection — alternating between tender and […]
Trying to cram a novella into the space of a short story Knowing that you’ve tried to cram a novella into the space of a short story space yet refusing to write the novella Writing five, non-overlapping drafts without reaching a workable story Reading “Heart of Darkness” eight times while writing this story before realizing […]
I’ve added a new page for short story collection publishers in the right sidebar. This isn’t meant as a substitute for the legwork necessary to determine where to send your collection — the best research is to check the publisher of your favorite collections — but hopefully it might help some people at the beginning […]
Garrett Calcaterra is a fantastic editor and writer. I should know: I’ve been in a writing group with him for the last five years. I’ve got a lot of respect for him because he works harder than anyone else I know, both at writing literary fiction and fantasy/speculative fiction, not to mention all the editing he […]
Free Online Submission Interpretation: We really like you and respect you. There are diamonds in the slush pile and we want to find them. It’s virtually free for us to accept online submissions so we won’t charge you on some trumped up charge. We get undergrads and MFA students to wade through all the slush […]
