July 2010
22 posts
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In Space, Smiling by Adam Peterson →
Now my parents are dead, and I have given up many dreams. For example, I will never be an astronaut even though on my business card there is a drawing of myself in space, smiling. I am not smiling because of the large Neapolitan ice cream cone I am holding or the space pony I am riding through the stars. These are just props. I am smiling because in the picture I am an astronaut. If I’d lived...
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A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: With Change... →
Not only will readers be able to separate the wheat from the chaff (as they’ve been doing since the first books were ever sold), but a free-for-all in the marketplace will allow, for the very first time, some writers to find success who never would have found it through the old, severely flawed system. New voices will stand out. New bestsellers will be born, not because of a giant...
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Addiction, Poems by Ally Malinenko →
(via metazen)
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In the Desert, Stephen Crane
poetry365:
In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said: “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter - bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”
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“Fiction gives a second chance that life denies us.”
– Paul Theroux
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Bath (by Amy Lowell)
The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light. Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and...
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“Both of your noses twitch as you look at each other. The strap of her dress...”
– Office Girl | Annalemma Magazine (by Joe Meno)
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The Penguin Blog: Long Books and the Curse of the... →
So, this little bit of cod research tells us that people don’t mind long books, or, put another way, they don’t find length inherently off-putting. The seven books mentioned above are obviously very commercial propositions; immensely readable with g-force plots. However, why do people sometimes assume that the same will not be true for more, dare I say, literary reads? Does length in commercial...
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Essay - Only Disconnect - NYTimes.com →
I am sitting underneath a tree beside a sturdy summer cottage rebuilt by an ingenious Swedish woman. The birds are twittering, but in a slightly different way than my New York friends. I open a novel, “A Short History of Women,” by Kate Walbert, a book I will grow to love over the coming week, but at first my data-addled brain is puzzled by the density and length of it (256 pages? how many screens...
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Familiar Horror Movie Scenes Ruined by the New... →
III.
“We’re trapped!”
“Quick, call for help! It’ll be back by sunset!”
“No signal! Shit! It’s gonna get us!“
“Dude, you’re holding it in your left hand.”
“What?!”
“You’re covering the little antenna thing on the bottom there.”
“Fuck, that’s right. I mean, I know it’s a cool design, but you’d think they’d test the hell out of it.”
“No kidding. Hey, how’s the signal looking?“
“Five bars....
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“equipoise - (noun) 1. A state of balance. 2. Something that serves as a...”
– A.Word.A.Day —equipoise
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“Why write? To write. To make something.”
– — Claude Simon
Via: Twitter / The Paris Review.
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Before I Left Oregon
The man I’d been seeing asked me to go for a walk with him and his daughter. I had no idea he would leave us
in his mother’s empty yard while he went to see a friend I’d never heard of. We found a bird, dead by the side of the house. His daughter
wanted to hold it, to see if it was still warm, if it had broken its skull or died of cold. Instead, I scooped it into a trowel I found
on the...
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A Message to Po Chu-I
In that tenth winter of your exile the cold never letting go of you and your hunger aching inside you day and night while you heard the voices out of the starving mouths around you old ones and infants and animals those curtains of bones swaying on stilts and you heard the faint cries of the birds searching in the frozen mud for something to swallow and you watched the migrants trapped...
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Scientifically-Proven Ways to Improve Creativity –... →
Psychological distance
Chronological distance
Absurdist stimulation
Use highly emotional states
Combine opposites
Take resistive paths
Re-conceptualization
Counterfactual mindset
Two simultaneous problems
Generic verbs
Synonyms and category taxonomies
Engage conflict
Think love not sex
Stop daydreaming
Quote from Grayson Perry:
Being creative is all about being unself-conscious;...
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“Not anymore,” he said. He’d accepted the reality TV show paycheck but he wanted...”
– The Man I Gave A Hand Job In West Hollywood Will Surely Blow His Brains Out Before I See Him Again - The Rumpus.net
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“Do you ever ask yourself, “What am I really contributing to the good of mankind...”
– Great discussion on the motivation for writing, what people want to get out of writing/reading, and whether or not to include social commentary—perhaps even overtly.
What is Your Worth? | Annalemma Magazine
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“feculent - (adjective) Full of filth or waste matter.”
– A.Word.A.Day —feculent
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“Raymond Burr Is Not in this Movie”
Raymond Burr isn’t even Japanese. He has no place in this narrative. You expected a monster movie, the straight line progression of vandalism and death. But this plot’s triangular, a love story predicated on deceit and betrayal, its edges sharpened by panic.
You don’t speak the language, but you still understand what is happening. Even without...
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You Will Find Us Grave Men - The Nervous Breakdown →
Awesome story by Tyler Stoddard Smith.
