When I am struggling to write a short story, I often elect to take it for a walk. I’m like, “Come on Story, let’s get some fresh air.” So the story and I go meandering through Central Park, where my story can inhale the pure-bred piss of other stories, where it can take huge dumps [...]
Category > Words
Big-time dictionary drama
My chief complaint about being a student is that I no longer have time to blog about other peoples’ mistakes. Between drinking espresso and smoking self-consciously and wearing knee socks, I’ve been forced to neglect all the truly exciting, schadenfreudy stuff like typos on the GOP website and arts & crafts gone bad and fashion [...]
The limits of my vocabulary meet the Foxfield Races
Here is a girl who got a perfect score* on her verbal SATs, but who can’t find a synonym for “awesome” in quotidian** conversation. Or who finds herself stuck with “interesting” as a default adjective whether she’s discussing a Great American Novel or the pizza she had for lunch. The verbal portion of my brain [...]
The NYTimes is not letting America get stupid
Front page headline updated six minutes ago: William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead at 82 Mr. Buckley marshaled polysyllabic exuberance and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse. Someone studied for his SATs.
Five Year Anniversary of Gawker
Here is a good article about Gawker.com from N + 1 Magazine. It’s about the perils of being a young, ambitious, and sarcastic woman who loves to write about life in the big city. I was careful not to learn any life lessons while reading it. Well, I learned one lesson. The internet loves bitches. [...]
I can has LOLcat Wasteland
An excerpt from “LOLcat Wasteland” by Corprew Reed, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”: 1. IM IN UR WASTELAND BURYING UR DEAD april hates u, makes lilacs, u no can has. (1) april in ur memoriez, making ur desire. spring rain in ur dull rootzes. earth in ur winter, covered in snow can has potato. [...]
Editor for Hire
I wish that I could hire myself as an editor, but I am much better at telling other people what to do. It’s hard to detach myself from my own writing. That being said, I have a lot of editing experience, and I’d love to help you get your book published.
Lovebirds
Last night in writing workshop, Middle mentioned NanoWrimo, the National Novel Writing Month that owes much of its popularity to being fun to say. Not only can people churn out novels like robots, but they can actually sound like robots when they explain what they’re doing. “Na-no-wri-mo,” I thought. “Hehe.” “It’s only 50,000 words in [...]
Hey Rolling Stone Magazine
I know you’re ultra liberal and in touch with the youth and irreverent and everything, but make up your mind whether you want to try for a serious piece of journalism, or use blow job metaphors and the word “fuck” in your political articles. Rolling Stone writing is the equivalent of your precocious 12-year-old cousin’s [...]
Words I often want to use casually in conversation but then don’t, because I realize at the last minute I don’t know quite how to pronounce them
1. Irrevocable 2. Inconsolable Where are the accents? No matter how many times I look up the pronunciations on Dictionary.com, I still can’t remember. 3. non sequitur (I can never say this word casually enough.) 4. coven (somehow I always find myself wanting to talk about witches, but with a hard or a soft O?)