Writers get asked a lot of questions. Successful writers get asked a lot more questions. Very successful writers get to charge people for asking questions. And amazingly successful writers don’t have to answer any questions at all. All questions are valid, even dumb ones. Yes, there are stupid questions, and stupid people, and sometimes the […]
Tagged: writing (33)
Random Thoughts About Clouds, Dancing Writers, TV, Boomers, Beer and Serena’s Butt
Thoughts generally are random. That’s what makes them magical. Or at least interesting. The random nature of thought, or what some of us might call stream of consciousness, leads to the difficult brilliance of the likes of Joyce and Borges, or the hilarious (but studied) non-sequiturs of Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin. Wait. I think watching […]
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Also tagged Amazon, beer, Borges, clouds, Hong Kong, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jennifer Egan, Joyce, Kuala Lumpur, Leopold Bloom, Malaysia, Margaret Atwood, Montreal, Quebec, Spock, Stephen King, Stewie Griffin, Waterstone's
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Twitter on the Radio
I recently did an interview with CKUT here in Montreal. You can link to the interview here. I appear at the 43 minute mark (approximately). The interview runs for about 12 minutes. I talk about Twitter, about writing and social media, about the changes in writing and The Writer brought about by the immediacy of […]
This is What Busy Looks Like
Nothing. It looks like nothing because you don’t get anything done. It’s an empty box, sunshine without light, warmth without heat. Plans get demolished, not by anything sinister, but by life, by the forward progress of time, by the inevitable bullshit of living, the accretion of layers of stuff, things we have to climb over […]
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Also tagged Back to the Future, bagel, books, dogs, Facebook, families, Jonathan Franzen, Montreal, New Urbanism, Nicholson Baker, nothing, science fair, time machine, Twitter
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The Male (Writer) Conundrum
Perhaps not conundrum. But last week my agent sent me an email that contained these lines: I wonder if this one might be better off with a male editor, or someone with a slightly different sensibility? This from an editor at a major publishing house. And this wasn’t the first time he’s received a response […]
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Also tagged agents, Bono, cowboys and aliens, Franzen, Jersey Shore, queries, Raymond Carver, Salon, Snooki, U2, vampires, zombies
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The First Novel as Constipation
Every year around this time I find myself tired for no reason, as if my mind somehow feels the weight of the year and decides to shut down. Either that or I’m getting ready for winter by wanting to hibernate. It’s also a birthday thing. My birthday, which normally I don’t care much about (no […]
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Also tagged agents, birthday, Christmas, constipation, Kraft Dinner, novel, Yes
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Useless? Or Process?
I wrote about 4,000 words last weekend. Mostly on Sunday. I had the house to myself and got to work. I’ve been working on a short story off and on for the last month or so and the story keeps changing and I keep writing more words. Soon this thing is going to have to […]
#WhyIWrite
There’s a meme going around Twitter today called #WhyIWrite. Search the hashtag and you’ll see thousands of writers of all stripes answering the question. (I learned of it from reading a tweet by Neil Gaiman.) It’s an odd question, to me at least, because no one really enjoys writing. If a writer tells you they […]
The Art of Procrastination
There is an art to procrastination and we are all proficient at it in various ways. I nailed it this weekend. I wanted to finish writing a short story all weekend and never got around to it. I thought about the story a lot (and the thinking is an important part of the writing process) […]
