Sweating the details: Notes on “August: Osage County”
Movies are fantasy. We know this. We know that normal people living normal lives don't look like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie (though we can better imagine they might look like Jennifer Lawrence, who is accessable and beautiful), and we know the lives they are living on screen are a kind of heightened reality. And…
Read MoreDoes good writing depend on looking under a story’s hood?
You'd think writing was just about putting words on a page, in a coherent and potentially attractive and compelling order. And you'd be right. But as with any interest/specialty/art what have you thing that people focus their lives around, apparently there's a hell of a lot of technical jargon, too. Stuff I grew up just…
Read MoreGoing, going “Gone Girl”: Read it now
I'm a little late to the party, but I can't recommend highly enough Gillian Flynn's terrific "Gone Girl." I ran through it in about ten days (which considering my schedule is pretty swift) and though it'll sound like a cliche, hadn't felt a book emotionally yo-yo me like that in, well, almost forever. If you…
Read More22 Rules for Storytelling
In lieu of anything significant from my pea brain today, how about a list from Emma Coates, the story artist at Pixar? 22 Rules for Storytelling Terrific advice there, including: "Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone." and…
Read MoreHow to deal with freeloading publishers: Look to ‘Goodfellas’
When I got started writing for newspapers and magazines, I did it for peanuts. Not literally legumes, but CDs. I was writing reviews for a tiny paper in Boston called The Beat, which was essentially done out of a basement and given away free in stores, and if I got a free CD out of…
Read MoreWaving with my hand, smiling with my mouth
We've all got evidence from somewhere in our childhoods that mom thought our artwork was awesome. Frame-worthy. My mom's particularly great at this kind of stuff: She has a framed picture of a hamburger I did in pastel in an art class — taken from an Arby's ad — hanging in her kitchen. I was…
Read MoreWhy writers write what they know, even if they don’t know they know it
Here's why I know anything about jazz, or Gaelic culture, or the criminal justice system: I wanted to write a book. Yes, NYU's continuing education program may have come in handy, a bit, on that latter one. But why would anyone bother to educate themselves on arcane knowledge just for the sake of a book?…
Read MoreType it, and the words will come. Trust me on this.
As I told M Sunday night around 12:15 am (so okay, it was early Sunday morning), it's easier than breaking rocks to get paid to cover the Oscars from the comfort of your own home office … but six hours in front of the TV and computer screen ain't for wusses, either. We got home…
Read MoreWhy writers need to keep their eyes on the road
Me, writer's group last night: "The hardest part of writing a book is figuring out how to do it." Much raucous laughter. The thing is, that's true, even if completely obvious. People always ask "where do you get your ideas"? Ideas, frankly, are like flowers at a botanical garden. Everybody's got ideas. That's one of…
Read MoreLife lessons in song, courtesy “American Idol” and Peter Cetera
"American Idol" is back on again, and it really is oh, so easy to look at those people and say: "Shit, I could do that." And though there's less meanness and crappy singers on than in the Simon Cowell years, it's even easier to say, "Those people are morons. Can't they hear themselves?" Answers: No,…
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