Saturday, January 6, was my first run of 2018. By “run,” I mean “moving outdoors, forward-like, over some amount of land,” and by this metric, it was a total success.
Category Archives: Writers You Must Read
Runity: A Journal of Running + Vanity + Accountability + Honesty
What motivates us? I ask this of my undergrad novelists-to-be, as I find ways to motivate them towards a 50,000-word draft goal. Not all our motivations are virtuous or attractive, I say. We might be motivated by doing a job well, or by the shame of failing a class. Or both.
As a writer, I admit my motivations are usually both pretty and petty, at once open-hearted and full of fangs. A story or chapter can spring from these two forces equally, as in:
a) Neat! A new idea!(Oooh, shiny overheard conversation! Or, let’s solve this structure puzzle!) and
b) Screw you, buddy (I could totally write that book better than [imaginary nemesis], and I could totally win that contest).
BOO! My list of “12 Haunting American Stories” at @ElectricLit!
Wondering what short stories to read this Halloween? Here’s my list of spooky, funny, absurd, horrifying, and tragic American ghostly short stories, featuring titles by Dan Chaon, Kelly Link, Stephen King, Charles Chesnutt, Benjamin Percy, and more!
WWTMD? (What Would Toni Morrison Do?)
As a writer, as a person, it’s the closest I get to prayer: What Would Toni Morrison Do? How the Nobel Laureate guides me, new at the Ploughshares blog.
(<—- Signed first edition of Jazz, courtesy of my husband on my birthday [today].)
On Louts, Shooting Dogs, and Antonya Nelson
It started because I wanted to shoot a dog. In a short story, that is. The stories for my first collection— then my doctoral dissertation— were character-driven epiphanies hinging on a character’s decision to act, or not to act. A story with a gun on page 1 and fired by the ending—this sounded like big, explosive fun. So I shoehorned a dog-shooting into a story that really didn’t need it.
My dissertation advisor looked over my draft and said, “If you want to shoot an animal in a story, read ‘Fair Hunt,’ by Antonya Nelson.”
Read the complete post at The Missouri Review.
The Nifty Trick of Dan Chaon’s “A Little Something to Remember Me By”
Who would condemn the grieving parents of a long-lost, likely murdered boy? Who would turn these parents’ tears to treacle, their mourning into manipulation— and make the reader hate them, too? Dan Chaon would. It’s a nifty trick. And it’s one of the reasons I adore “A Little Something To Remember Me By,” from Chaon’s second collection, Among the Missing.
Read the complete post at The Missouri Review.