May 2010
1 post
“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”
– Lawrence Kasdan
April 2010
3 posts
Our Powers of Creative Justification are Finely...
In an (admittedly lame) effort to justify the purchase of an iPad, I am embarking on a year-long experiment: a full 365 days will pass before I use another piece of paper. Goodbye trusty steno pad, so long Office Max credit card, farewell Moleskine— let the games begin.
March 2010
5 posts
“The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“The writer must write what he has to say. Not speak it.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little...”
– Raymond Chandler
February 2010
4 posts
“The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk...”
– Chris Baty
3-Day Novel Contest →
Month-long noveling is for pussies.
[Actually, month-long noveling is likely the best way to produce a correctable first-draft known to man. But that wouldn’t have made for a very amusing caption, and we are slaves to the pithy one-liner.]
Writing: A Literary Love Story in the Form of a...
writing
fuck
that is all
July 2009
1 post
6 Writers Who Accidentally Crapped Out... →
Consume as many bran muffins as you are able to inhale in the span of time it takes you to read the linked article. Prepare for greatness.
June 2009
25 posts
NCBI ROFL →
Like a Fail Blog for biomedical research articles. If you can’t find the germ of a story idea squirming around on the hilarious petri dish that is NCBI ROFL, you just aren’t trying.
“Consciousness will always be one degree above comprehensibility.”
– G̈̈ӧsta Carl Henrik Ehrensvӓrd
Science fiction's contribution to the life of... →
This is a DOUBLEPLUSGOOD article. Please enjoy it and excuse our absence as we depart to have some victory gin and strangle a prole.
“If you really want to hurt your parents and you don’t have nerve enough to...”
– Kurt Vonnegut
Lit Juicing →
The Great American Novel is one syringe away. Tragically, we are unable to benefit from this chemical breakthrough due to a lifelong aversion to sharp things and acne. Sigh.
Person or Unperson. Query.
Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy, rendered in Newspeak by J.A. Lindon:
Person or unperson. Query. Unbellyfeel Ingsoc, oldthink, ownthink, (PLUSUNGOOD THOUGHTCRIME. PENALTY: UNLIFE) Or Ingsoc foolthink doubleplusungood Own unlife bellyfeel, make self unlifer, Unperson, unofficial. (PENALTY: JOYCAMP) Only unwake: become unlifer. (FOOLTHINK) Unwake, and thusby unperform our...
5 Kickass Lessons Books Could Learn from the... →
We get the impression that the author of this article is not entirely joking. Or perhaps we’re just projecting. Read. Laugh. Repeat as needed.
Writers and Poets Run Israeli Newspaper,... →
We find the inherent separation of journalists from writers in the linked article disheartening—do we not all worship at the same altar of ABC? Are the grammatical rules of the journalists really so different from our own? Can’t we all just get along?
“If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em!”
– John Waters, dispensing valuable Friday night advice (via Let Us Read and Let Us Dance)
“I’ve had 18 straight whiskies … I think that’s the record.”
– Last words of Dylan Thomas
“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
– Last words of Oscar Wilde
The typist's tale of 'Last Tycoon' →
A secretary’s account of the last days of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
A Monday theme emerges…
“I am about to—or I am going to—die. Either expression is used.”
– Last words of Dominique Bouhours, grammarian
1984: The masterpiece that killed George... →
What better way to celebrate the dawn of yet another Monday than to contemplate the last days of one author’s undisputed brilliance?
“The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.”
– Marty Feldman
“Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything...”
– Kurt Vonnegut
Show or Tell: A Critic at Large →
A brief history of creative writing programs proves that, whether or not creative writing can be effectively taught, it can certainly be institutionalized. Imagine our joy.
May 2009
26 posts
“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”
– Miguel de Cervantes, porn writer
Infinite Summer →
June is rapidly approaching, should you fail to acquire a copy of Infinite Jest before May’s end, your regret for the road not taken will be… well, infinite.
“When I am dead, I hope it is said,
‘His sins were scarlet, but his books were...”
– Hilaire Belloc
“If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds...”
– Edgar Rice Burroughs
*Prop 8, moving forward...
And now for some rampant politicizing. For this we turn to the wise words of Titivil, who says it better than we could hope to, (as he often does):
As long as the struggle for gay marriage rights is going to be a bumpy conflict of indeterminate length, let’s just set this one ground rule:
As these skirmishes unfold state by state, when you Prop8ers attain some kind of victory, whether it...
Is it OK to run an illegal library from my locker... →
Like the oft maligned Ms. Houston, we believe the children are our future.
“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”
– Robert Benchley