“Don’t discount the two greatest cures for [writer’s] Block: plagiarism and suicide.” Joshua Cohen dispenses some curious advice to writers at Ask the Paris Review.
A Cure for Writer’s Block
A Caricature of ‘Not a Good Person’
“Because what [narcissists] have inside is empty space, they have had to make a study of the selves of others in order to invent something that looks and sounds like one. Narcissists are imitators par excellence. And they do not copy the small, boring parts of selves. They take what they think are the biggest, most impressive parts of other selves, and devise a hologram of self that seems superpowered. Let’s call it ‘selfiness,’ this simulacrum of a superpowered self.” Go enjoy this excerpt from Kristin Dombek’s new book The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism.
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Frances Cha on Thinking in Two Languages
Frances Cha discusses the process behind writing her book If I Had Your Face, as she navigated two languages and audiences.
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Know The Rules Before You Break Them
Point: Dan Chaon believes younger writers should read more contemporary writing before attempting to be published themselves. Counterpoint: J. Robert Lennon believes most contemporary writing is a waste of would-be writers’ precious time. TL;DR Version: Nathan Elwood notes that if writers “want to change the face of literary fiction … [they should] at least know what it looks like.”
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Book Discoverability
Millions staff writer Patrick Brown put together a case study (featuring graphs!) on how books get “discovered.” Spoiler alert: there’s no “magic bullet.”
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Flexible Cinderella
On the persistent popularity and flexibility of Cinderella, from old folktales featuring talking gourds all the way to the upcoming Disney version, from NPR.
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Can Cash Money be Caro’s Next Project?
Eric Brightwell has written a great primer on “the independent years” of Cash Money Records (ca. 1991-1998). Now that the outfit has its own publishing arm, Cash Money Content, I suggest you brush up.