January 2011
63 posts
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uhhuhhoney-deactivated20110421 asked: So: How do you know when you're writing the right way? Think about it: there are million different turns and a million different twists to write. How do you know when you're actually getting it right? It feels like what workshop did was point out what you did when you didn't follow the rules. But doesn't storytelling go beyond rules? How do you know how to write in a way that...
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Revolutions: The Egyptian Case
From Foreign Policy’s garysick:
the crowds in the street are not interested in continuity. And continuity is really all that Washington and Tel Aviv want.
Read more →
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The House GOP's Plan to Redefine Rape →
sarahb:danielleh:mutations:tparty:thnafu:squintyoureyes:
“This bill takes us backwards to a time when just saying no wasn’t enough to qualify as rape.”
Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes.
As for the incest...
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A Reading List: Prose Stylists
I received terrific responses to my call for a list of notable women prose sentence-makers. It’s always striking with reading lists how pantheons differ and one person’s favorites are another’s also-rans or never heard-ofs. It’s strange to me to think how no one could hope to read all the books published in even a single year; and the extent to which anyone’s sense of...
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“If you can’t write like New York, you have no business living in New York and...”
– James M. Cain (via theparisreview) Great interview, though I’d bet cash money Cain’s New York is different to yours or mine, and that he’d agree: “New York is not even a city, it’s a congerie of rotten villages.”
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@omally176:
AnonymousIRC: Egypt Gov only blocking by DNS. So for Twitter try 128.242.245.148 Facebook 69.63.189.11 Proxy retweet
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Ooh, great responses to my list of notable women (prose) sentence-makers. I’ll collate, so keep suggesting! Some more I thought of after posting:
Sigrid Nunez, Paula Fox, Mary Robison, Aimee Bender, Antonya Nelson, Lydia Davis, Angela Carter, Penelope Fitzgerald
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Let's Start a List
I love Stanley Fish on writing, and have used his methods in the classroom (I believe to my students’ general bewilderment), so I’m kind of ridiculously curious about his new book How to Write a Sentence. But when Adam Hazlett was writing his otherwise inspiring Slate/FT review, including examples of prose style from Hemingway to Henry James to WIlliam Trevor to Antonin Scalia, did no...
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Django Django, “Storm”
Was thrilled...
There needs to be a @DowagerCountess.
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"when a beer garden was proposed for the top of... →
Distributing reservoir at 42nd and Fifth, c. 1894. (Office for Metropolitan History)
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Laura McKenna:
Great-grandfather Norton was a peculiar guy. An alcoholic who never missed a day of work and lived until he was 90. A brilliant man who calculated the exact number of cobble stones needed to pave a road in Chicago in his head, yet never finished third grade. A bigot who taught my dad slurs for every ethic group, yet wasn’t allowed entry into white bars in Chicago after...
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Anyone have any ideas why notes vanish from posts and (sometimes) reappear, or how audio tracks can suddenly have fewer plays? I only care a little, but it does make me wonder what else might vanish.
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A Kind of Short Story
My boyfriend/husband/lover/partner/girlfriend/father/mother/sibling/child said something equivocal. You could know us by our furniture. My gestures were pregnant.
I went to a cubicle or reception desk job in an American town that no longer made things. My officemates ate junk food loudly; one of them was quirky. I would have preferred to be elsewhere, but didn’t say so, and I had one...
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The Story Problem: 10 Thoughts on Academia’s Novel... →
amywhipple:
Cathy Day is amazing. This is important. Go, read, discuss.
This—and Amy’s response—is so, so good, whether you actually do want to write short stories:
Please don’t write a story that is nonrealistic, because genre fiction makes us nervous and uncomfortable. Unless you’re doing a Saunders thing. We like George Saunders. If you want to do a Saunders thing, fine....
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"communal experience masquerading as solitude" →
In The Guardian, Laura Miller looks at how contemporary fiction is (belatedly, she thinks) referencing the Internet.
I wonder if thinking of the Internet as itself a topic, to be addressed or avoided in fiction, is specific to a certain generation, and dependent on when and how fully you went online. Last year I wrote a story that begins with Facebook stalking ( I promise: more interesting than...
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fictionz-deactivated20120304 asked: I admire and your writing and this blog.
What discoveries have you made about becoming a published author? Is it more difficult or easier than you imagined?
What discoveries have you made about becoming a published author? Is it more difficult or easier than you imagined?
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RE: Obama's speech, cheering in the stadium, etc.
spiers:
…I don’t think there was anything categorically confusing about the memorial service. I think Obama gave an eloquent and distinctly non-partisan speech that touched on larger themes that go well beyond even the usual reiteration of core democratic (small d, emphasized—not as in party affiliation) themes.
[…]
I don’t think that the notion that we should take a moment to think...
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Collect All 40 →
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Watchkateoplis:
MSNBC talks to Rep. Gabrielle Gifford about the death threats, vandalism and harassments.
“Sarah Palin has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there are consequences to that action.”
The host’s slightly pejorative tone in referring to Giffords’s healthcare vote (which Giffords parries with so much grace), and...