Category: Rants

Speaking Up Would’ve Created More Drama on the Page

According to the Washington Post, former Attorney General William P. Barr is the latest member of the Trump administration to criticize his old boss in a book. Barr’s text One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General goes on sale next week. But in early copies floating around, Barr allegedly states that Donald…

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Books Are Horrifying

At least, I wish more were. In trying to decide what to write about for the latest Slushpile, I pored over Best Of lists (still going strong on the cusp of February!), Top 10s, Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine picks, and the picks of those whom Reese Witherspoon picked for Hello Sunshine. I am all for…

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Kristen Roupenian Is Not Cat Person

As an apt follow-up to both my previous post about a writing career’s sure path to poverty, as well an earlier post about how an unknown writer’s first short story in the New Yorker led to a seven-figure deal with an S&S imprint, comes “What It Felt Like When ‘Cat Person’ Went Viral,” by Kristen…

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NYT: Writers Will Now Starve to Death, Die

Unless they’re Ernest Hemingway. In this edition of “Why did I major in English?” or, “Why did I go to a liberal arts college?” The New York Times‘ Concepci?n de Le?n presents us with this bit of news: “‘In the 20th century, a good literary writer could earn a middle-class living just writing,’ said Mary…

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We need to talk about Alec, but can’t

The discussion about actor Alec Baldwin’s recently published memoir Nevertheless perfectly encapsulates why reasonable conversation is impossible in this culture at the moment. First, of interest to us as writers… Focus now, focus. Baldwin took to Facebook to complain about typos in his memoir and smear the publisher for not editing enough. Typos are, indeed,…

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