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Who Will Speak for You? Why Writing Well Matters
Cover of The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition [Note: I suspect the following is preaching to the choir for most readers of this humble blog. Even so it may prove useful to them in making a point,...
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Some Recent Articles of Interest to Writers
Precession of a gyroscope (Photo credit: Wikipedia) A gyroscope keeps its rotation axis constant. Therefore, angles measured in this frame are equivalent to angles measured in the lab frame (Photo...
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You Have to Be Willing to Make a Fool Out of Yourself: Some Advice to a Young...
(c)Copyright 2013 Margaret Langstaff, All Rights Reserved I receive many emails and questions from young writers of fiction, serious novices who have literary aspirations. Many of them are well read...
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Some Telling Truths about Truth Itself by Authors Who Were or Are Intent on...
This is a thorny issue, and dangerous under the best of circumstances. But it is an inescapable one, an ongoing lifelong challenge, for serious writers. So many acceptable dodges, evasions, even...
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Charming Paintings of Vintage Books That Smoke, Drink, and Slip on Banana Peels
margaretjeanlangstaff:I’ve imagined these … and bet other writers have too but the images were hardly as whimsical and wonderful as these … What fun these illustrations are …. Originally posted on...
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Finally! A Tutorial for Book Busters and Writer Biters!
[Just have to pass this on] Attn.: Book Trolls, Author Flamers Running out of helpless, vulnerable life forms to torment? Can’t get a rise outta any old author anywhere anymore? Check it out, you...
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A Rare and Precious Gift –“What’s So Funny” Part Two
Portrait of Sigmund Freud (Photo credit: Wikipedia) “Humor has in it a liberating element … “It refuses to be hurt by the arrows of reality or to be compelled to suffer. It insists that it is...
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Art Is Not for Everybody
Filed under: Humor, Literature, Rants, writing Tagged: Art, artists, authors, Catholic writers, commercial fiction, Flannery O'Connor, Literature, popular fiction, writers, writing
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“Of the Making of Books There Is No End”
Of the making of books there is no end, and too much study is wearisome to the flesh. –ECCLESIASTES 12:12 NKJ Love this photo and thought you might appreciate it too. Don’t know who shot it, but I...
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Why Do We Read and Write Fiction?
In a strange coincidence both the New York Times and the New Yorker published within two days’ time (Dec.8 and 9) two thoughtful and resonant essays by top literary critics about fiction, its whys and...
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The Writing Life and Dealing with the Inevitable Failures (from the New York...
[An excerpt from an honest and compassionate look at the terrors and disappointments unique to the writing life. Recommended!] “In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope,...
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I don’t get it, but “toot-toot” anyway, book sots
I wrote this book more than four years ago, the first in a series of over the top, raucous Florida based mysteries featuring a red haired wild woman, Garnet Sullivan. It was the first novel I wrote...
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“Authors are Upset at Amazon. Again.”— New York Times
[In a surprisingly candid and forceful piece the NYT 12/27/14 covers the widespread Kindle author rage at Amazon’s latest bells and whistles–“enhancements” which cost ‘em big bucks. Some best-selling...
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Writers, Is it a calling or a job? NYTBR
I don’t know how something can be both interesting and pedestrian at the same time. In this case it may be that it’s interesting that the New York Times Book Review has chosen to spotlight so...
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What’s the Big Idea?
I was scratching my head yesterday at the astronomical number of new books on writing on the market today–most by people I’ve never heard of before with slim writing resumes and credentials. If you...
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