Books
4 reasons most book clubs just don’t work
Finding the right book club feels like dating. Many will be tried, few will succeed. At least, that's been my experience. Over the years I occasionally feel a need to actually share my reading experiences, which are wide and varied and as much about finding book-lovin' folk as it is to talk about the specific…
Read MoreYou can’t go home to Arrakis again
Recently, a link popped up all over my Facebook thread, informing me how I could begin breezing through books at a much more rapid rate than I do. If I don't know anything more about that particular link, it's because, f that noise. I see no need to read faster. I probably need to read…
Read MoreDream mining for story inspiration: Check and check!
Who says dreams are dead time? I woke up with an idea for a short story on Sunday morning and pounded out a good start. The only problem now: Where to take the darn thing. Secondary problem: Finding the time to finish it up. The important part is starting. It's even more important when you're…
Read MoreKick your own can, jump in your own tub of marshmallows
This morning, I watched Veronica Roth jump into a bathtub full of marshmallows. I'm a bit behind the times — she did this in 2010 and posted it on her blog, a promise fulfilled to her readers about what she'd do if she landed a book deal. And when "Divergent" got her that deal, she…
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 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 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…
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