Snag this short story collection while it's F-R-E-E. Don't need a Kindle, a Nook, a nanny, a hall pass, or even matching socks -- just a computer screen with which to download and read these totally FREE short stories.
Let's do this.
Showing posts with label contemporary literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contemporary literature. Show all posts
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Free ebook, that's right completely FREE for 48 more hours
People,
Snag this short story collection while it's F-R-E-E. Don't need a Kindle, a Nook, a nanny, a hall pass, or even matching socks -- just a computer screen with which to download and read these totally FREE short stories.
Let's do this.
Snag this short story collection while it's F-R-E-E. Don't need a Kindle, a Nook, a nanny, a hall pass, or even matching socks -- just a computer screen with which to download and read these totally FREE short stories.
Let's do this.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Lie to Me (Please)
A novelist’s business is lying. – Ursula Le Guin, Preface to The Left Hand of Darkness
What’s the biggest mistake fledgling writers make? They’re afraid to lie. I’ve done this, everybody has. It’s an elephant-sized faux pas in fiction writing.
A great deal of writing is born out of journaling, which is an erudite way of saying keeping a diary. Writing tends to have its roots in psychological therapy and so short stories often spring from journaling. This is fine if only the roots of a story are planted in the dark, murky compost of our actual lives.
But really good fiction is just that: somebody made it up. Only from fiction can we find emotional truth. Shakespeare was never an actual prince in Denmark or any where else, but from Hamlet comes a lot of profound emotional truths about human existence including: grief, guilt and anger. Pretty much everybody with a pulse has experienced these feelings at one time or another. It’s easy to empathize with Hamlet, even if he is a prince, Danish and never really existed.
If you don’t believe me, consider these examples.
Was Annie Proulx ever a gay cowboy living in Wyoming in the 1960s? No, she’s a straight woman who was born in and spent most of her life in New England –- Stephen King’s neck of the woods -- not Ennis’ empty rural waste. But she did an award-winning job convincing us she was a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.
Never a gay cowboy.
Was there ever a land called Narnia with a giant, Christ-like lion who talked to little English kids? No but Carroll Lewis makes us believe this in The Chronicles of Narnia.
Did an evil spirit cause the death of a family in Amityville, New York? No, but writer Jay Anson did a bang-up job convincing a lot of people that one did in The Amityville Horror. Anson performed the oldest trick in the book: he based a series of lies on a truth. A guy really did kill some family members and, like countless other convicted murderers before him, he alleged for years that the devil made him do it.
Did you go through a tumultuous marriage in your youth? Maybe got married at age 20 and then divorced at 22. Did you and your spouse literally pull each other’s hair out in fights and war over custody rights for years? Do you really want to even hint that you’re writing a story now about that event and risk getting sued? Think up a character, someone NOT like you. Change their hair color, age, height, etc. Now change the setting. If you live in Vermont (like Ms. Proulx) set the divorce story in Wyoming. If you live in Florida, set your story in Nepal.
It’s okay to lie, fellow writers, really it’s just fine. It might even inhibit an angry relative from filing suit. You will never find emotional truth until you learn how to lie about the details that bring your reader to that truth.
What’s the biggest mistake fledgling writers make? They’re afraid to lie. I’ve done this, everybody has. It’s an elephant-sized faux pas in fiction writing.
A great deal of writing is born out of journaling, which is an erudite way of saying keeping a diary. Writing tends to have its roots in psychological therapy and so short stories often spring from journaling. This is fine if only the roots of a story are planted in the dark, murky compost of our actual lives.
But really good fiction is just that: somebody made it up. Only from fiction can we find emotional truth. Shakespeare was never an actual prince in Denmark or any where else, but from Hamlet comes a lot of profound emotional truths about human existence including: grief, guilt and anger. Pretty much everybody with a pulse has experienced these feelings at one time or another. It’s easy to empathize with Hamlet, even if he is a prince, Danish and never really existed.
If you don’t believe me, consider these examples.
Was Annie Proulx ever a gay cowboy living in Wyoming in the 1960s? No, she’s a straight woman who was born in and spent most of her life in New England –- Stephen King’s neck of the woods -- not Ennis’ empty rural waste. But she did an award-winning job convincing us she was a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.
Was there ever a land called Narnia with a giant, Christ-like lion who talked to little English kids? No but Carroll Lewis makes us believe this in The Chronicles of Narnia.
Did an evil spirit cause the death of a family in Amityville, New York? No, but writer Jay Anson did a bang-up job convincing a lot of people that one did in The Amityville Horror. Anson performed the oldest trick in the book: he based a series of lies on a truth. A guy really did kill some family members and, like countless other convicted murderers before him, he alleged for years that the devil made him do it.
Did you go through a tumultuous marriage in your youth? Maybe got married at age 20 and then divorced at 22. Did you and your spouse literally pull each other’s hair out in fights and war over custody rights for years? Do you really want to even hint that you’re writing a story now about that event and risk getting sued? Think up a character, someone NOT like you. Change their hair color, age, height, etc. Now change the setting. If you live in Vermont (like Ms. Proulx) set the divorce story in Wyoming. If you live in Florida, set your story in Nepal.
It’s okay to lie, fellow writers, really it’s just fine. It might even inhibit an angry relative from filing suit. You will never find emotional truth until you learn how to lie about the details that bring your reader to that truth.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Animated! Now with more robotic voices!
If you aren't some grad student contemporary English lit geek, you probably won't get this. If you are one of the above, please don't send me hate mail. I do like some of David Foster Wallace's stuff, specifically his short story Forever Overhead which is a sublime piece of prose.
And P.S., I'm sorry he's dead. It would have been nice to verbally spar with him. Now all we have is that stick in the mud, Franzen.
And P.S., I'm sorry he's dead. It would have been nice to verbally spar with him. Now all we have is that stick in the mud, Franzen.
Monday, August 03, 2009
I see your un-read novels list, and I raise you!
Supposedly, the BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Copy this. Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - (saw the flick)
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - No
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - No
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6. The Bible - X (NAS)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - No
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - No
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - X (read in 2002 and remember almost nothing)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - X
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - No
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - No
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - No
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - X (the high school standards: Julius Cesar, Hamlet, Romeo-n-Juliet (the censored version)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - No
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X (junior high)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - No
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X (multiple times, was on Elko County H.S.'s banned list)
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - No
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot - No
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - No
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X (but I don't remember much)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens - No, but read parts of Oliver Twist and Christmas Carol
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - No
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - No, started to, lost interest
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - No
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - X (again, don't remember much)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - No
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - X (loved this when I was 12)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - No
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - parts of it
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X (over and over again from age 11 to 16)
34. Emma - Jane Austen - No
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen - No
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X (yes, yes!)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - No
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - No
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - No (dominant paradigm sexual fantasies put me to sleep)
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell - X (another one I barely remember)
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - No
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - No, but I read "The World According to Garp" and started "A Widow for One Year"
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - No
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - No, but I remember my mom reading me this
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - No
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - X, yes, YES!
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X, Golding was one of my favorite, also read two other books of his
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - No
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel - No
52. Dune - Frank Herbert - X, two or three times
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - No
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - No
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - No
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - No
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - No
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - X, another I barely remember
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - No
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - No, but I saw the more recent movie and really liked it
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt - No
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - No
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - No
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac - X, YES!
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - No
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - X, and I read "Edge of Reason" and laughed till I peed
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - X, yes, love Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - No
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - X
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker - No, but I've read like every other single vamp story out there
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - No
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - X, YES! And his other books
75. Ulysses - James Joyce - No
76. The Inferno - Dante - No, but parts of it
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - No
78. Germinal - Emile Zola - No
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - No
80. Possession - AS Byatt - No, but I own the DVD and have read one of her other books
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - No
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker - No, but I read FIVE of her other books
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - No
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - No
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - No
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X, but don't remember it
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - No
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - No
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - No
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - No, but have read parts/excerpts
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint - Exupery - X, but I don't remember it
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - No but I've read one of this others
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams - X, in fact just re-read it for the sixth time this Xmas
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - No, but I really should
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - No
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - No
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - No
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - No
Actually read: 29 ... I'm gonna say 28 1/2 just because
On my list and in the house: Hardly any of them. I'm a creative minimalist ... plus I took a painful trip to the used book store in May and unloaded almost two full boxes of paperback and hard bounds I'd been hauling around since before college.
Instructions: Copy this. Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - (saw the flick)
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - No
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - No
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6. The Bible - X (NAS)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - No
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - No
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - X (read in 2002 and remember almost nothing)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - X
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - No
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - No
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - No
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - X (the high school standards: Julius Cesar, Hamlet, Romeo-n-Juliet (the censored version)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - No
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X (junior high)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - No
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X (multiple times, was on Elko County H.S.'s banned list)
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - No
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot - No
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - No
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X (but I don't remember much)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens - No, but read parts of Oliver Twist and Christmas Carol
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - No
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - No, started to, lost interest
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - No
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - X (again, don't remember much)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - No
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - X (loved this when I was 12)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - No
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - parts of it
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X (over and over again from age 11 to 16)
34. Emma - Jane Austen - No
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen - No
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X (yes, yes!)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - No
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - No
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - No (dominant paradigm sexual fantasies put me to sleep)
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell - X (another one I barely remember)
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - No
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - No, but I read "The World According to Garp" and started "A Widow for One Year"
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - No
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - No, but I remember my mom reading me this
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - No
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - X, yes, YES!
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X, Golding was one of my favorite, also read two other books of his
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - No
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel - No
52. Dune - Frank Herbert - X, two or three times
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - No
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - No
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - No
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - No
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - No
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - X, another I barely remember
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - No
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - No, but I saw the more recent movie and really liked it
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt - No
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - No
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - No
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac - X, YES!
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - No
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - X, and I read "Edge of Reason" and laughed till I peed
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - X, yes, love Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - No
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - X
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker - No, but I've read like every other single vamp story out there
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - No
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - X, YES! And his other books
75. Ulysses - James Joyce - No
76. The Inferno - Dante - No, but parts of it
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - No
78. Germinal - Emile Zola - No
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - No
80. Possession - AS Byatt - No, but I own the DVD and have read one of her other books
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - No
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker - No, but I read FIVE of her other books
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - No
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - No
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - No
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X, but don't remember it
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - No
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - No
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - No
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - No, but have read parts/excerpts
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint - Exupery - X, but I don't remember it
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - No but I've read one of this others
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams - X, in fact just re-read it for the sixth time this Xmas
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - No, but I really should
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - No
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - No
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - No
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - No
Actually read: 29 ... I'm gonna say 28 1/2 just because
On my list and in the house: Hardly any of them. I'm a creative minimalist ... plus I took a painful trip to the used book store in May and unloaded almost two full boxes of paperback and hard bounds I'd been hauling around since before college.
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