This week, I’m going to give you the writing exercise up front, because it was a prompt and, in the “real” world, the audience would know what I was writing toward before-hand: The other day, I posted a clip from The Daily Show in which John Hodgman jokingly suggests authors stage live “writings” in bookstores,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: “This is happening””
Category Archives: writing
Writer’s Notebook delayed till tomorrow
Just a quick note, readers: I’m putting off the Writer’s Notebook until tomorrow. It’s not because I’m lazy or — as has been the case lately — because I’m busy. It’s because today is my birthday, and I’m not doing anything that looks like work. Except fixing dinner, because I do the cooking around here.Continue reading “Writer’s Notebook delayed till tomorrow”
Daily Show: Borders Goes Out of Business
The Daily Show‘s correspondent John Hodgman suggests that to save bookstores from closing (as Borders has recently done, we might try altering the in-store “entertainment”: 1st collector for Daily Show: Borders Goes Out of Business Follow my videos on vodpod ”Instead of hosting ‘readings’, why not host exciting live ‘writings’? Bring the author in, tieContinue reading “Daily Show: Borders Goes Out of Business”
America’s Next Top Author (and other fantasy programs for book lovers) (via Here’s To Us)
You know we all do this. I’ve actually filled notebook pages with ideas like this, and just the other day I was remarking to a fellow educator how I occasionally fantasize about precisely this sort of “Project Runway” / “Design Star” / [name your reality show] approach to a writing classroom. It would never workContinue reading “America’s Next Top Author (and other fantasy programs for book lovers) (via Here’s To Us)”
A Writer’s Notebook: one-sentence stories
The other day, some friends of mine and I were celebrating a new story by a writer friend of ours, Riley Schultz. Which is nothing new — I am lucky to know enough writers that I get to celebrate new fiction quite frequently. But what makes Riley’s story particularly noteworthy is that it is onlyContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: one-sentence stories”
A Writer’s Notebook: query plot synopsis
So, first some notes: I’ve skipped a couple of weeks of the Writer’s Notebook, not because I haven’t been working but because I’ve been working on writing not really suited to the Notebook. I’m in a place right now where I have a lot of finished work I want to get into print, and itContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: query plot synopsis”
Not really a new publication
Remember back almost a year ago when I wrote a little story based on Chris Van Allsburg’s “Uninvited Guests” from his book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick? It was for a Writer’s Notebook exercise,* and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed that story and I like revisiting it nowContinue reading “Not really a new publication”
Small stone, Vol. 2, #23
The refrigerator gurgles and hums, the soft vibrato of the compressor like a brook on rocks; somewhere upstairs a neighbor runs their kitchen tap and the water rains down the building’s pipes, and I hear the gentle rumble of bare feet on wood floors; the hard disc of my laptop whirs as it awakens like a birdContinue reading “Small stone, Vol. 2, #23”
Small stone, Vol. 2, #22
Cold like a bullet, it rolls between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, that tiny jagged crown where the stem once was pressing a rough circle into my palate. It is so ripely firm it will not burst until I break it with my teeth. Then, oh! the tang and natural sugars, that succulentContinue reading “Small stone, Vol. 2, #22”
A Writer’s Notebook: The Writer’s Toolbox, sentence sticks
So, last week I let Jamie Cat Callan‘s The Writer’s Toolbox help me start a story. It was about John, an architect from Minnesota who is feeling guilty over abandoning his elderly mother in order to stalk the woman he’s secretly in love with. Don’t ask me — the Toolbox came up with this story. But that’s whereContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: The Writer’s Toolbox, sentence sticks”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 