writer and teacher
Two points of view about writing that might seem opposed. I don’t think they are, though. Ann Patchett: I don’t believe in writer’s block. I think writer’s block is just a myth that was invented by people who either don’t want to work or people who aren’t ready to get an idea down on paper.…
Over the weekend, Diane Havens, the wonderful narrator of the Iambik audiobook of Alcestis, and Miette Elm of Iambik asked me excellent questions about the book, writing, and audiobooks, including some Proust-questionnaire-style inquiries about my favorite sounds. If you follow the Q&A link, you’ll see a discount code for all Iambik’s titles through the end…
That was a busy week! Two cross-half-the-country trips, both overnight, and I somehow managed to avoid the worst snarls of weather-related travel drama. But I’m very glad to be back in Austin, where it’s supposed to hit 70 this weekend. Texas, sometimes I love you a lot. I keep tagging things to post here and…
The Blanton Museum Book Club meeting was really lovely — we met in one of the galleries while the museum was open for Third Thursday, next to some very fitting art. It’s been a little while since I’ve talked to a group about Alcestis, and I’ve been thinking so much about Killingly lately that it…
Today I come bearing a link to this fun Q&A, with very smart questions about writing process asked by Laura Maylene Walter and, er, answered by me, possibly in a less smart manner. Laura and I went to high school together, attended the PA Governor’s School for the Arts during the same summer, and worked…
In the Independent, Arifa Akbar asks if “fictive sex” can “ever have artistic merit.” The context here is the annual Bad Sex Awards, given out by the Literary Review. Since I think the answer to that question is indubitably “yes,” I was particularly intrigued by this piece of information: Ironically, the bad sex awards were…
I find it super-charming that the geeks behind Fallout New Vegas wrote Kate Beaton (patron comics saint of English and history geeks everywhere) into their game. Tamil pulp fiction, now translated into English. An interesting blog post on mechanical means of ensuring that more works of fiction and film pass the Bechdel test, written by…
At Brooklyn Arden, Cheryl Klein is saying interesting things about narrative elements of the romance plot, YA, and Taylor Swift; Malinda Lo responds to a question in Klein’s comments about how those narrative elements may or may not change in queer romance plots. Allow me to geek out for a moment. (I taught a class…
ArmadilloCon was delightful, even though I was gimping around all weekend thanks to a twisted ankle during my Saturday-morning run. (Side note: why are ankles so weird? It felt fine for half a day after I twisted it and then just started throbbing in the middle of a panel. Thanks to everyone at the con…
The first thing I read this morning, while eating my quinoa flakes, was Kate Elliott’s excellent post about how she knows a scene needs to be rewritten: The medium answer is: I feel uncomfortable with it (see: “I just know” above) because: the rhythm feels wrong when I re-read it. The rhythm of a scene…