Category: Writing
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Scared Kid Writes Horror
The dark hides me. It’s safer here, hidden. My mother tells me this story later: she heard crying, a child, outside. She thought “That sounds like Jenny.” She goes outside and finds two-year-old me, outside, in the middle of the night, when I’m supposed to be in bed. This is the first recorded time of…
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The 5 Books on My Desk
I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes…writing is hard. Today I struggled. And I did not accomplish much. (The kitchen is clean. There’s that. It counts.) To help combat the doldrums I keep five writing books within reach of my desk. I thought that if anyone else was struggling — especially in the middle…
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Playlists
At the keyboard, waiting for words to come, I often flip over to Spotify, looking for new playlists. Always hunting for some melody, some tangible experience I haven’t heard before. Triggering some thought I haven’t thought before. I ask friends on Facebook for songs and create new playlists. I browse playlists already created in genres…
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Write Expecting to be Read: Mary Shelley’s Journals
When I was younger – maybe eleven or twelve – my mother told me never to write down anything I didn’t want someone else to read. If I kept a diary or a journal, I needed to make sure I meant what I said. And I should never write down anything I would not say…
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Objects and Force
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Kerouac’s Genius/Interpreter Theory vs. Jenny’s Genius/Genius Theory
We’re going to finish up our exploration of Kerouac with a couple of differing opinions on the form “genius” takes. “Let’s examine the word ‘genius.’ It doesn’t mean screwiness or eccentricity or excessive ‘talent.’ It is derived from the Latin word gignere (to beget) and a genius is simply a person who originates something never…
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Writing the Windblown, Schizophrenic World
I came across this fascinating book called Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 — which covers the period of time when he wrote his first novel The Town and the City and his second On the Road. Basically, it’s a log of his word counts, which are insanely high (but we talked before about…
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Lightning, the Lightning Bug, and the Price of Some of Kerouac’s Revisions
**Be forewarned, adult language/content** Mark Twain once said something like (I don’t have the direct quote in front of me): “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Agree or disagree, Twain has a point. To illustrate, I give you two passages from On the Road…