Most of my recent posts have derailed into IRL blather, which, while fascinating (to me), is not the point of this journal. So, since I'm embroiled in finals week and have no particular thoughts on literature, I give you someone who did: Henry James!

( From 'The Art of Fiction' )

From gramarye1971 :

Take no more than 15 minutes to produce a list of 15 books [
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    Happy Earth Week, everyone!  Anyway --

One:

A little while ago I attended a talk at my school given by alumni who are now pursuing careers that are, in one way or another, related to the environment.  I got some interesting ideas about possible future career options and this shocking fact: the major city with the highest flood risk in the ( Read more... )

I'm the landlord for three main characters who squat in my headspace.  As of yet, I have not placed them into any story, nor have landscape or feeling or agenda spirited them into action.  I don't really know yet what they are going to do; I don't really know if, when I do finally start writing, they will still even be the characters I want to ( Read more... )

Generalizations ahoy: When I ask my guy friends what their favorite books are, they tend to tell me On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien -- all good books, to be sure; all books written by men.  If I ( Read more... )

Good grammar + good spelling ≠ good writing ( Read more... )

The way this exercise works, said my sixth grade teacher Kirsten, you put your pen to the paper and write “I want to write about” and then you keep writing until the whole page is filled with things you want to write about. It didn’t really work for me - I find most writing exercises to be boring huge swill-generators - but since I apparently am ( Read more... )