“Because at the end of the day, there is no magic solution, no short-cut, to writing something that hopefully will last. No matter how we search for one.” Jeff VanderMeer gives eight writing tips for aspiring writers in the Chicago Review of Books. See also: VanderMeer’s prolific 2017 Year in Reading entry.
Tricks of the Trade
I Can’t Read
If you’re like this writer, you’ve read enough by now about the scourge of writer’s block. The literature on authors having trouble producing literature is enough to sustain a whole genre by itself. Which is why it’s refreshing to read this article, which tackles another problem: the vexing, peculiar strain of overload known as reader’s block.
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(Don’t) Judge a Book by Its Cover
Dan Piepenbring writes at The Paris Review on judging a book by its cover in the Weimar Republic and the sheer mastery of some of the early twentieth-century German cover designers. Two related pieces from The Millions: our own Bill Morris on the pleasures of the typewritten book cover and Matt Allard on reimagining some popular cover art.
Scenes from a Marriage
Recommended Reading: Year in Reading alumna Emily Gould revisits Chris Kraus’s “cult feminist classic” I Love Dick, as it appears for the first time in the UK.
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