Write a poem about London, a story about traveling to Mars, a bastardization of somebody’s mythology. Thumb your nose at Those Who Know.  read more »

What struck me the most about it, was that as you read it, not once is there a single moment where Murakami enjoys running, at least in the traditional sense where you have a big smile on your face while you're doing something. The entire book is about pain management and self-discipline, which sounds terribly dry and unenjoyable. It's also a book about failure, about the countless events Murakami enters and doesn't do quite as well as expected.  read more »

Whenever I bring chapters from my novel-in-progress to my workshop group, the group inevitably wants to cut out the first two paragraphs, and sometimes more, of the pages I bring in.  I always see where they're coming from: as an episode, the chapter would have more immediacy without the quick summaries of what characters do while time elapses, before the scene begins.  Yet when I think about the novel as a whole, I wonder if something human would get lost if I wrote it episodically, in this filmic, stay-with-the-action manner.  read more »

No, this is not a diatribe about the Bush Administration, although the fact that the years coincide is not entirely coincidental. This is about my personal failure, about the incredible waste of time that has been my writing life from the autumn of 2000 to the present.

I don't want your pity for this. I'm not going Morrissey. I am depressed about it, but the depression is tempered with realism, with the bare facts. I've produced nothing publishable in eight years, despite constantly being at work.  read more »

Yesterday evening, I had the occasion to sit next to a very prolific, well-published NW fiction writer.  He had with him a classic book written for girls, which, given his tough-guy reputation, one would not expect him to have.  I asked him what the book was for.  He said, "Oh, it's the structure of my next novel."  read more »

I have an Internet addiction.  In fact, I wrote an entire novel about Internet addiction.  You would think, after several years, I would have developed the proper coping mechanism for said addiction, but alas, I have not.

And so, during a particularly devastating period of writers' block, in which procrastination levels, and thus Web surfing, were redlining, I bought a precision screwdriver set and played a game of Operation with my laptop.  read more »

My former advisor and good friend, Lewis Buzbee, who authored a much acclaimed book of essays about bookstores, called The Yellow Lighted Bookshop, likes to tell the story of a lunch he had with Ray Bradbury, back when Buzbee was a college freshman.  A few interested students were invited to dine with Mr. Bradbury after a reading he gave at UCSB, Buzbee among them.  After they were finished, the rest of the students scampered off, leaving Buzbee alone with the author.
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