Part four of what may be the most interesting dialog I’ve ever had with another human being (I’ve had plenty of good ones with cats) is now live at the Sunday Observer. Pablo D’Stair and I talk all sorts of shop. Seriously, and I say this as objectively as one can when the subject of a piece, this thing is worth reading, all parts, one through four. Read part four, here. Then, be sure to read part one and part two and part three as well.
Part three of what may be the most interesting dialog I’ve ever had with another human being (I’ve had plenty of good ones with dogs) is now live at the Sunday Observer. Pablo D’Stair and I talk all sorts of shop. In his installment we compare publishing to marathon running (but not in that long haul, endurance cliche way that you might be thinking) and also what sort of accolades should be involved, if any, in publishing. Read part three, here. Then, be sure to read part one and part two as well.
Part two of what may be the most interesting dialog I've ever had with another human being (I've had plenty of good ones with dogs) is now live at the Sunday Observer. Pablo D'Stair and I talk all sorts of shop. In his installment we talk about a world without context, the reader as an audience, music, and more. Seriously, and I'm not just saying this because I'm involved, there is some damn good stuff going on here. Read part two, here. Then, be sure to read part one as well.
Extree, extree, this just in, Caleb tells you why you may have shitty taste in books. New article at Slothrop.com just went live, titled "Why You Will Never Stop Reading Books by that Shitty Author You Secretly Love." A taste: My goal here, it would seem, is to strip away the magic and aesthetic pleasure from the reading experience until all that remains is a conscious system of if/thens made to cultivate so much data and worry that you’d be better to build an apocalypse bunker, devoid of all text, than to crease the spine of a highly anticipated blockbuster from James Patterson (though, you’d be wise to avoid the latter no matter my intentions with this blog post). Yes, it seems that way. But no. Rather, it is important to understand the very basics of the free will argument if we are to at all suppose books as a unique…
Increasingly, one of my favorite things is dialogue(ing) with Pablo D'Stair. He's the sort of arm-chair thinker/drinker, literary critic type that I get on well with. Recently, he and I had yet another email back-and-forth, this one for the Montage section of the Sunday Observer ("Sri Lanka's English Newspaper with the largest circulation"), where we wax on about genre vs. literary writing, the sound of language, what constitutes success, and more. Dare I say that this series is perhaps our most interesting dialogue yet (though, I reserve the right to someday find hidden genius in our past discussions). Head over to the Sunday Observer now get all icky with Pablo and Caleb sticky.
Just live, late, late last night, a new post over at Phil Jourdan's Slothrop blog. Writer’s block has nothing to do with motivation (if the story is working, you’ll have plenty of motivation). It has nothing to do with a weak plot (plenty of great books are weak on plot; The Great Gatsby is “guy moves into a house next to rich guy”…that’s about it). It has nothing to do with your own seemingly problematic writing environment (Chuck Palahniuk wrote Choke while bound up in a hospital bed; you aren’t allowed to complain). Most of the time writer’s block is simply your brain’s reaction to a weakness in your story. Head over to Slothrop to read the post. Leave a comment. Let Phil know how much you love the article. Maybe he will have me back. Also, as a bonus, this article can act as a glimpse of what I’ll be teaching for June’s Tallgrass…
Rules are important, especially rules that govern how to write effective prose. But, in the hands of masters, those rules can be broken to great effect. I this, this newest episode of The World's First Author Video Blog, I examine how three well-known books--Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, and Jose Saramago's Blindness--break basic writing rules, but do so successfully. After watching, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay updated on new videos