I've started reading Foucault's Pendulum, which appears to be about a group of editors who create a conspiracy for fun, but then end up believing in it themselves. I'm just at the beginning of it, but already the type of mind to create and believe in complicated conspiracies is captured very well in the narrator. …
Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Very few books I've read can hold so much power in so few words. The ending of this book, in the final paragraphs, performs a tying up of the whole novel that changes the light cast on all the previous pages. The Affirmation had a similar effect in its final page, but this one …
The last day
This year I finished a novel, wrote and mostly edited a novella, wrote a number of short stories that I forgot to keep track of, made a blog post every day this year, read/listened to 34 novels, and helped start an online magazine. It's been a productive year for writing! Best novel I read this year: …
What are your resolutions?
To write more? I bet one of them is to write more. All us writers tend to make that resolution every year. But the trick to keeping those resolutions is to make your goal something measurable, and achievable. For example, no nebulous 'write more' goals. Pick something solid like 'write a story each month' or …
Is writing too easy?
I got this fancy pen from my sister for Christmas, and it's made me think a bit about writing. Back when this was the most modern tool for creating fiction, writers had to be very careful with what they wrote, had to be at a desk, with ink and paper, and so on, and had …
Jonas David 