Writing

Writing and Rejection: Toni Morrison Edition

So let’s say you’ve been reading the posts last week during Banned Books Week and you’re thinking you’d like to write your own tome that will one day vex some censorious-minded individual by its very existence. Well, first off: great bucket list item. I’ve yet to meet an author who doesn’t find it as amusing to be in that circle of writers even as they’re annoyed at the small-mindedness of others that put them there.…

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Various and Sundry Writing

Short Stories to Get the Imagination Flowing

Okay, so I’ve been posting daily during this Banned Books Week, but perhaps you’re reading this and feeling guilty that you haven’t dived into some banned book. You shouldn’t. The only people who should feel guilty should be people who are say, trying to burn books they haven’t read in a school’s furnace. Bear in mind: Enter Emily Temple compiling a list of 43 of the most iconic and engaging short stories in the English…

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Various and Sundry Writing

Children’s Books are Dangerous

As I continue to celebrate Banned Books Week 2024, I feel I need to follow up yesterday’s post about Kurt Vonnegut’s “dignified fury” with mockery… and when they’re cooking with gas, few folks mock as well as McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Shanna Walsh, who as a former middle school teacher knows a thing or two about the dangers facing kids, gives us a list of children’s books that will make their brains rot… or possibly their…

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Writing

Kurt Vonnegut: “I am very real”

In celebration of Banned Books Week, I have a post I’ve meant to make for some years now. With every story I read about the late writer Kurt Vonnegut, it reminds me that I should read and re-visit his own stories — his novels. One of these stories relates to a letter he wrote to some honest-to-badness book burners. I first read it on Letters of Note (note, paywall) and also via the Peabody Institute…

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Various and Sundry Writing

Banned Books Week 2024

I’ve always enjoyed the official start of Fall, but one of the more recent heralds of the season is Banned Books Week, something I’ve posted about on this blog since 2018. Much like Pumpkin Spice, some people hate on particular books for the most spurious of reasons. And then some people get mad that you use words like ‘spurious,’ which they’re pretty sure has to be a naughty word. I’ll be posting throughout the week,…

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Writing

Vonnegut On Writing

I’m working on a couple writing deadlines, so keeping the motivation up is important and I find Kurt Vonnegut to be a good source of pithy motivation. I’ve referred to him before, most recently in regards to routines, but Emily Temple made a collection of some of his ‘greatest hits’ for Literary Hub back in 2017. I should note that Literary Hub appears to like Vonnegut a lot, so you might respond to some of…

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Acting Writing

Out of the Madhouse: R.I.P. Bob Newhart

Bob Newhart has died. He wouldn’t want people to be anything other than low-key about it… perhaps a deadpan quip. And 94 years is a great run for a person. Maybe not for an elf, mind you, but remember he was management. Still, I’m quite bummed, and I’m hardly alone. You can read obituaries and appreciations from CinemaBlend has a good rundown of where you can see and hear some of his work. And the…

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Writing

Three Categories of Screenwriting Notes

Last week, I shared several links to showrunner wisdom. This week, I figured I’d share one of the inevitable outcomes of screenwriting: notes. I’ve linked to professional writer, de factor pop culture historian, and prolific blogger Mark Evanier before (definitely check out his series on rejection), but here’s a nice piece about the three categories of notes you’re likely to experience as a screenwriter (spurred on by an article by his former screenwriting partner now…

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Producing Writing

More About Showrunner Rules and Writers’ Rooms

So I’ve been meaning to do a few more posts about screenwriting and I realized I never followed up on “The 11 Laws of Showrunning by Javier Grillo-Marxuach” which I wrote about back in April… and which shows how the year is racing away from me. You see, I meant to follow up the next week with this interview with Javier Grillo-Marxuach where he talks about the 11 Laws, his books Shoot This One and…

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Writing

Le Guin’s Old Home to Become Writer Residency

Ursula K. Le Guin, who died in 2018, once described imagination as the “single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination.“ It therefore feels right that her in Portland, Oregon is set to become a home for future writers, working to unleash their imagination and engage with the community in the best way. This plan was evidently set in motion…

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