“Start with the novel’s climax (often the first thing you know about it, its most striking moment) and work backward, asking why-why-why. Then write forward.” Nell Zink at The Lithub on how to become a novelist in 10 easy steps. See also our interview with Zink from last week.
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at the utmost limits of writing itself
Christian Bök wonders about the future of conceptual poetry:”How do we write poems in a world where a spambot, like @horse_ebooks, gets to write all the great lines…?”
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You Should Be Writing
Sometimes we just need a gentle little reminder. Here are some love letters to you from all of your unfinished writing, who would like to propose a little ménage à trois with you and your editor. Last year’s iteration of the series is also well-worth a revisit.
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“Degreelash”
What did we read in the Obama era? Christian Lorentzen has some answers. Apart from individual books like The Flamethrowers and The Art of Fielding, he comes up with some genres that have dominated the past eight years, including autofiction, works of trauma and fables of meritocracy. (You can probably guess where Leaving the Atocha Station ends up.)
Writing through Dementia
Recommended Reading: Gerda Saunders’s essay “My Dementia: Telling who I am before I forget” on being a writer with dementia. “Looking back at the chapters I’ve completed, I ask myself, ‘How come I can still write? Could I be faking dementia?'”
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Meteor Shower
Check out Clint Smith’s poem “Meteor Shower” at the Diverse Arts Project. Not into poetry? We have ten poems for people who hate poetry.
Your Country Rocks
Few people know that Roger Ebert was an ardent Anglophile, so much so that in 1986 he wrote an obscure little book, The Perfect London Walk, in which the lifelong film critic laid out his preferred walking path through the city. Over at Slate, Katie Engelhart reviews the book, which apparently still functions as a guide to a decent stroll.
Blame the Superheroes
Don’t expect to hear from Alan Moore anytime soon. He is withdrawing from public life after accusations that his comics include racist characters and too much sexual violence toward women according to an interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid. He also took the opportunity to disparage society’s obsession with superheroes, which probably won’t win him any more fans. “To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children’s characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence.”
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