Category: Writing Life
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How To Be a Real Writer
If you really want to piss me off, you can say the following phrase. “Oh, I’m a real writer.” At the very least, I’ll text everyone I know about what a goon you are, or I might sub-tweet you. Maybe I’ll laugh in your face, or maybe I’ll go completely Patrick Swayze and rip your throat out,…
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Book Swag and Temptation
I love writer swag. Notebooks, fancy pens, tote bags, stickers with book quotes on them. I drool over The Writer‘s monthly Take Note column, listing all the things I could buy to make myself a better writer. If I sling my typewriter tote bag over my shoulder, people will know that I labor over the craft each…
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On Writing “Rough Night in Little Toke”
You kids, with your fancy animes and your Crackles and your CrunchyRolls, you don’t know how hard the rest of us used to have it! Back in my day, we had to get anime from a CATALOG. Specifically, the Viz catalog, which arrived every so often (quarterly, perhaps?) at my house on Park Place. It…
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The Night Belongs to Mona
As I mentioned in my last post, my crime writing notebook, Gail, is nearly full. She had an interesting life; early character sketches became Stella and Miles in “Narc” (forthcoming in The Big Click) and “Rough Night in Little Toke” (featured in Hanzai Japan,) as well as the home for the starts of three possible novels. Mona was…
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Steely Dan, New Notebooks, and Other Dark Sarcasm
Let me start by saying that I’m listening to a lot of Steely Dan as I write this, so if it comes off as rambling, dark and sarcastic, I apologize. Every time I put on a Steely Dan record, I find myself thinking why am I not spending every minute of every day listening to Steely…
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De-Stem Your Prose: Writing Advice from SIDEWAYS
“They didn’t de-stem, hoping for some semblance of concentration, crushed it up with leaves and mice, and then wound up with this rancid tar and turpentine bullshit.” Miles (Paul Giamatti) Sideways. This is my favorite way to describe over-wrought prose. Back in college, writing “leaves and sticks and mice” in the margins was a shorthand among my friends…
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How To Not Be a Stressed-Out Monster
After a couple weeks of crushing chest pains and stabbing feelings in random parts of my stomach, I managed to get a doctor’s appointment, where they did a bunch of tests (including an EKG) and determined that I have an ulcer brought on by the debilitating stress that is my everyday existence. A little background…
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On Triathlons and The Myth of ‘Wasted Words’
One of the coolest parts about my job as a reporter is that for all the meetings I attend and hard news I write, I also get to do a whole host of feature stories, which means I get to meet a lot of interesting people. And last week, once again, I got to dip into…
Libby Cudmore 