For Those About To Write (We Salute You) #15: Eat, Drink, and Be… Something
For Those About To Write (We Salute You) will present a writing exercise to the Ploughshares community every few weeks. We heartily encourage everyone reading to take part! Holy smokes, pals, we’ve almost been at this for a year now! YES! How’d we all do gettin’ small? I’ve always loved
Finding the Formula in a 20th Century Fiction Factory
I was only a few pages in when I understood I wouldn’t be finishing The Outdoor Girls In a Motorcar, a 1913 book from a series called, appropriately, The Outdoor Girls. I’ve already written about not finishing good books, and that wasn’t the issue this time. In fact, it
Four Reasons to Write the Hell Out of (What’s Left of) 2013
Okay writers. You may be secretly planning to tread water until the New Year, at which point you’ll of course begin tackling your epic plans for Writerly Greatness. 2014 is my year, you scrawl in your Moleskine. Now where is my pie? But there are all kinds of reasons to
Roundup: Traditions
In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week. Food and family are the most common holiday traditions.
A Playlist for John Henry Fleming’s Songs for the Deaf
John Henry Fleming’s forthcoming story collection, Songs for the Deaf, is full of haunted characters: haunted by the deaths of loved ones, memories of lovers, knowledge of truth. The range of characters—aliens, bigfoot look-alikes, cloud readers, floating girls—lends itself to satire, creating a new mythology out of crises of
Episodia 1.15: Revising with Sherlock
I don’t know about you, but when I write my rough drafts, I’m staggering around in the dark. There are plot holes, dropped story lines, and unanswered questions—all the good, gnarly stuff that goes into the early part of the writing process. The key for us writers is—when the
Fictional Writer Master Class: The Bamboozlers
One of the perks of working in academia is ordering desk copies of books. While more often than not these things are tedious tomes that would put me to sleep, never mind my students, sometimes I happen upon gems, such as The Twentieth-Novel: An Introduction by R.B. Kershner. I’ll
Fact, Fiction, or Facebook?
Like Whitman, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” And in my case, the multitudes are on Facebook. I have eight different profiles to my name—or rather, not to my name. The characters in my harem—born of inside jokes, fictional stories, collaborative projects, and, of course, procrastination—are each their own unique and
The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “The Man Who Couldn’t Give It Away” by Scott Bradfield
When I used to teach intro fiction classes, I noticed that students often turned in stories that featured omniscient third-person narrators, and I can remember doing this when I started writing fiction, too. There’s something very alluring, especially when you first start writing, about being able to access the
Writing Lessons: Matthew Wimberley
In our Writing Lessons series, writers and writing students will discuss lessons learned, epiphanies about craft, and the challenges of studying writing. This week, we hear from Matthew Wimberley, an MFA student and Starworks Fellow at New York University. You can follow him on Tumblr at matthewwimberley.tumblr.com. —Andrew Ladd, Blog Editor