When you believe you alone possess the truth, locked securely away from the great unwashed, everyone who isn’t a supplicant is a thief trying to con the key from you.
Category Archives: Good vs. Bad Advice
“You Make a Mean Salad”
The Importance of Complicating Characters The summer after he and I graduated high school, my friend (for the sake of anonymity, let’s call him Ed, even though his real name is Joe), had perhaps his first truly adult date with his girlfriend (get your mind out of the gutter; I don’t mean it that way).Continue reading ““You Make a Mean Salad””
A Mercifully Brief Post About Knowing Nothing.
Which, Let’s Face It, I Know a Fair Amount About. Like most people, I’ve led an unusual life. For me, part of its unorthodoxy is my insistence on trying to make a living as a writer. Let’s just say, it’s been an uphill climb. But occasionally I comfort myself with the knowledge that there areContinue reading “A Mercifully Brief Post About Knowing Nothing.”
The Pros and Cons of Sleeplessness
In the grips of sleeplessness, I perform close readings of the whole canon of my inadequacies with what can only be described as a Talmudic intensity.
Judging Judgment (Ugh, What A Self-Consciously Cutsey Title. This Isn’t a Great Start)
In The Great Gatsby, its narrator asserts in the opening paragraphs that he makes a point of not judging people. He then goes on, roughly one paragraph later, to start judging and barely a page goes by in which he fails to not only judge people, but do so in a delightfully dry and atContinue reading “Judging Judgment (Ugh, What A Self-Consciously Cutsey Title. This Isn’t a Great Start)”
Killing Your Darlings. In Your Writing, I Mean. Not In Some Jim-Jonesian Way.
Hemingway said you should write your story, and then take all of the “best” lines out. Would we like F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Toni Morrison, or James Baldwin half as much if they took our their best lines?