By: Hannah Moskowitz This post has nothing to do with writing and absolutely everything to do with being a writer. The stereotype of a writer–the middle-aged man pounding feverishly at a typewriter, cigarette in his mouth, sending hard-copy manuscripts to his agent and protesting the change of every word–has yet to catch up with the […]
Dan Brown
Is Literary Fiction Losing Its Place in Culture?
Throughout this past year there’s been a persistent idea percolating around the literati: could literary fiction really be dead? No for real this time? No less an authority than Philip Roth wondered last year whether people still had the patience to read novels. Last month Lee Siegel wrote an article wondering “Where Have All the […]
The one question writers should never ask themselves when reading
Over the course of writing and maintaining this blog, I’ve found that there is one sure-fire way a commenter can set my teeth on edge and make me bring out the snide comment gun. (Well, I suppose it would work for someone to write an ode to queries beginning with rhetorical questions, but so far […]
You Can’t Make Something a Phenomenon
Around the Internet I often see a perception among readers and commenters that the sole reason certain books become wildly popular is because the publisher made them popular. This, presumably, is meant to discredit the success of the book by attributing its popularity not to the book’s merits, but rather to the efforts of a […]
Archetypes vs. cliches
There are many, many stories involving a young man, often of unknown/mysterious parentage, who suddenly realizes he’s the chosen one and has to embark on a quest against impossible odds to save his people. And yet Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, David and Goliath, and countless other stories are all different […]
Guest Blog Week: You May Be a Bestseller on Tralfamadore
Anne R. Allen is a freelance journalist living on the Central Coast of California. She has published two novels in the UK with maverick indie publishers Babash-Ryan: Food of Love (2003) and The Best Revenge (2005.) Babash has, alas, shuffled off this mortal coil, so she is out of print and scrambling down in the […]
