Dilettante

Plus, fiction makes more sense!

The writing process, in one gif.

I feel like this needs a third component -- maybe a personality quirk column, for example: Evil Butler, Addicted to Pokemon.

As much as I love the convenience and ease of e-readers, there is something special about the way things used to be.

I remember wondering what all the other people who had borrowed the book before me thought of the work. (Sometimes I would get to see, because the buggers left annotations in the text.) 

And then there was those super-cool times when I was the FIRST person to borrow a book.

Terrible reasons for becoming a writer #1. 

This is missing the scotch-drinking-crying-softly-underneath-the-desk phase, but otherwise, pretty accurate.

Sharing this here for all the "dead tree" bookworms :) 

Readers rejoice -- a new study in the journal Social Science and Medicine suggests that you'll live almost two years longer than non-readers. And books are even better!

Find the story here on the Smithsonian website.

Quite often I find that when writers write about writing (yes, I just did that) the advice is prescriptive, and so, useless. These folks, however, just get it:

1. “Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.” — Roddy Doyle
2. “Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.” — Geoff Dyer
3. “Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.” — Anne Enright
4. “You can also do all that with whiskey.” –Anne Enright
5. “Try to think of others’ good luck as encouragement to yourself.” — Richard Ford
6. “It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.” — Jonathan Franzen
7. “Keep in mind Oscar Wilde: ‘A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.’” — Joyce Carol Oates
8. “You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.” — Will Self
9. “If you have to read, to cheer yourself up read biographies of writers who went insane.” — Colm Tóibín
10. “Write.” — Neil Gaiman

And in some glorious future, we'll be able to replace the novelist with some kind of whisky-fuelled story algorithm machine. Ah, progress!

The last one is especially true ;)

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." ~Flannery O'Connor

Very chuffed to have a short story published by The Saturday Evening Post. The near-300-year-old magazine has printed stories by some of my idols, including Kurt Vonnegut.

This is a bit more sentimental than my usual fare, so it's a bit off-brand, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out: 

Empty Space Times Two