“He and Franzen talked a lot about what writing should be for. “We had this feeling that fiction ought to be good for something,” Franzen says. “Basically, we decided it was to combat loneliness.” This…
Browsing Category Writing
The part about taking a class in creative nonfiction makes me laugh
“And we understand, we nod our heads knowingly: here in America, size is power. The novel is the Wal-Mart, the Incredible Hulk, the jumbo jet of literature. The novel is insatiable — it wants to…
A first in Supergenius history
Hold on to your hats, Darling Ones. Get ready. I am pleased to announce that I have a short story due for my fiction class tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. and here it is 10:55 on…
A chat about rejection
Sunday night, over Instant Messenger, I helped my ten-year-old niece Jaycie with a writing project. She was working on her application to be a reporter for her elementary school’s newspaper. I’m still a little surprised…
Things I am looking forward to doing now that my stupid short story is done
Reading The Night of the Gun without any kind of guilt at all about how I should be writing Forgiving Lorrie Moore for not helping in my second-person-hour-of-need when I really needed her Sleeping through…
Germ-induced narcolepsy and the second person
Do you have any idea how hard it is to finish a short story when you can’t seem to stay awake for more than four hours in a row? Probably not. My brain is so…