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Posts tagged “writing process

Literary Resolutions 2013 . . . And a Tomato For Good Measure

Posted on January 19, 2013

Yes, it’s a little late. But I am ahead of those who are already seeing the doomed failure of their overly ambitious resolutions. That’s why “eat less cake” is not on my resolutions list. Besides, I still have 11 months and ten-ish days to follow through on my literary resolutions. Last year, I wrote a bit of a half-arsed resolutions post that wasn’t even titled a Literary Resolutions post – that’s how half-arsed it was. But I did make a reasonable attempt at more realistic resolutions. I only had three resolutions, two I didn’t accomplish, and one was so vague that any mild attempt made would be considered a success. So, yes, I was extremely successful in accomplishing Resolution #1. This year, I’m going…

The CUNY Writer’s Institute: One Month In!

Posted on October 24, 2012

As part of the fiction program at the CUNY Writers’ Institute, along with 16 other writers (read bios here), we meet two nights of the week to workshop our writing. One of those places is the conference room at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Yes, it is just as gangster as it sounds. Some of us are writing short stories, others are workshopping novels, and then there are writing exercises thrown in to keep us on our toes. The process of deadlines, reading and critiquing other writers’ work, as well as hearing their feedback, and of course the feedback from the editors we’re working with this semester, is really quite invigorating. Although you can’t tell from the image on the left, Matt Weiland is quite…

That Novel I’ve Been Working On . . .

Posted on January 11, 2012

Aside from not being a dog, or having a drinking problem, or being homies with a diabolical, talking baby, this is exactly what “working on my novel” has been like. At least for the last two years when all the research needed for the narrative is, in a sense, sorted. This is still a hilarious clip (note to my dad: this is how you use the word “hilarious,” not to randomly describe things like scuba diving, clothing, or hamburgers.) But it is less funny when I think about myself as Brian Griffin. Fortunately, I can’t sustain such introspective and deep thoughts while watching Family Guy for very long. In case it isn’t clear, this is a slightly late New Year’s Resolution Post. Yes, eleven…

Summer of Fun . . . and no Writing!

Posted on August 11, 2011

This Summer, I had big plans to make amends for my word count of about 0 since January. Needless to say, my New Year’s resolutions didn’t pan out quite as well as I had hoped. I’d like to say it’s because of my work and duties as a father and husband are exhausting. But the primary reason is pure laziness. I had a tiny bit of a bump in the road with my story and rather than sit there and work through it like a proper writer does, I opted to take the approach a muppet would: to go muppetting about and do anything except my writing. Some of it was indeed legit stuff: tidying the flat, grading papers, working on syllabi. Those sorts…

Martin Amis on “The War Against Cliché “

Posted on March 13, 2011

The mere mention of Martin Amis’s name (in England, anyway) sends grown men hurtling towards a nostalgic past they were probably never a part of, and women into hysterics. The sort reserved for Michael Jackson when he did the moonwalk. I can’t think of any other author who has ever had the power to elicit this sort of behaviour from grown men and women, let alone still be able to pull it off in their late sixties. Martin Amis is the grand-daddy of Lad-Lit (classily referred to as Dick-lit in America). He exploded onto the literary scene at 24 years old, winning the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award with The Rachel Papers in 1973.  The plot of his novels has never been very exciting, but…

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