fiction

  • odds & ends

    Happy Friday! Something to think about over the weekend: Dialog is people saying no to each other in interesting ways. It is about people talking, but can often be about people not communicating (thanks to Rob Roberge) The Book Publicity Blog makes the case for authors not approaching show producers on their own. Pamela Dorman…

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  • writing habits

    Oh dear. I just figured out what I need to do to be done with this novel before my vacation. I really need 5 good pages a day. That seems daunting at the moment. Here is a roundup of writerly habits. It runs the gamut – no big surprise there. No formula, except finding what…

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  • library envy

    Neil Gaiman’s library to be specific. Still trying to distract myself from the Chargers depressing loss to the Jets (heavy sigh). Variety of book reviews. I was most interested in Joshua Ferris’ The Unnamed. I am less interested after looking through the reviews, though most are giving him props for taking a risk.

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  • slush pile

    Great new post by Seth Fischer up at The Rumpus about the slush pile. He also links to this hilarious post on the DABDA of publishing.

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  • new again

    Writing is fun again! Yesterday something shifted when I was working on the novel, filling in thin places – things clicked back into place. Helped even more when I took a long walk through Fryman. Solved a few problems – I tend to write through a draft and leave sections to fill in later, hence…

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  • bad writing

    No need to annotate Dan Brown. While many – and I am not among them – like his storytelling, it must be widely recognized that from a craft standpoint it’s bad writing. Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum writes, “Brown’s writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad.” (if you’re not offended…

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  • O’Connor

    If Flannery Had A Blog has excerpts from novels, letters, bios, articles, etc.

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  • Richard Russo

    Have mentioned before how much I enjoyed Russo’s Straight Man. It’s one of the best comic novels I’ve read so far. He has a new one out and here he is in conversation with Sam Tanenhaus.

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  • more on characters

    Laurie Hutzler breaks down characters according to 9 types. She has a free ebook and newsletter on her site. Her emphasis is on film and television, but characters are characters and this is one approach. Another piece of advice is in the current issue of Poets & Writers magazine. Benjamin Percy discusses the Geometry of…

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  • material

    There’s material all around us for short stories and novels. Here are 5 different takes on Ruth Madoff and other clueless wives. I haven’t been following as closely as when the story first broke, but it’s entirely possible she did not know. It never fails to amaze me how people see what they want to…

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