At a loss for words
Yesterday we talked about a tool to help you analyze your writing for “flabbiness” or “fitness” based on your use of prepositions, adjective and adverbs, and so on. But could analyzing your writing...
View ArticleMessy Experiments, Elegant Solutions
I. In a recent-ish piece for NPR, “A Deathbed Story I Would Never Tell,” Robert Krulwich describes an incident in the life of physicist Richard Feynman. It is 1945, and Feynman’s young wife has just...
View ArticleLearning the Left Hand
I was suffering my own novel-panic when I read about John Stazinski’s in the Jan./Feb. issue of Poets & Writers—or, more accurately, I had been suffering the panic for years and was in the process...
View ArticleMaybe just one more cup…
I know few writers who need another reason for another cup of coffee. But if you need more convincing, how about your health? The reasoning isn’t yet understood, but it’s possible that coffee has...
View ArticleSorry Please Thank You, by Charles Yu
At first glance, you might peg Charles Yu’s collection Sorry Please Thank You (Pantheon) as sci-fi. A zombie wanders a big-box store, terrifying the employees. A company outsources grief, its...
View ArticleEmotional Punches: An Interview with Scott Hutchins
Credit: Michael Shindler/Photobooth In Scott Hutchins’s debut novel, A Working Theory of Love (Penguin), recently divorced 36-year-old Neill Bassett muddles through bachelor life and a job at a Bay...
View ArticleDaydreaming About Possiblities: An Interview with Janet Gilsdorf
Janet Gilsdorf doesn’t watch movies or television. And she doesn’t do Facebook. I’ve heard her say more than once that it’s crucial to decide what’s most important in life and make careful choices...
View ArticleEverything Counts as Research: An Interview with Ariel Djanikian
In addition to creative writing, Ariel Djanikian has studied chemistry and philosophy—oh yeah, she was a Fulbright scholar, too—and all of that shows in her debut novel, The Office of Mercy (Viking)....
View ArticleMessy Experiments, Elegant Solutions
Editor’s Note: As we approach our tenth year of publishing Fiction Writers Review, we’ve decided to curate a series of “From the Archives” posts that we’ll re-publish each week or so during 2017. Some...
View ArticleOf Anglerfish, Sci-fi, and Magic: An Interview with Jen Julian
When Jen Julian joined the University of Missouri PhD program, I was her official peer mentor, and we started writing together every Sunday. I quickly became certain that my “mentee” had just as much...
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