The push for diverse literature is making more people want to plunge into diverse writing. It’s also making a lot of people afraid of doing it wrong.
On diversity and doing it wrong
Tag: writing
Stop supporting the Huffington Post
The Huffington Post doesn’t pay their writers. So how come so many progressives keep viewing it as a legitimate news source?
Playing with narrative structure on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The regrettably short-lived Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles had a lot of stuff going on for it, but one of the most fascinating elements of the show for me was the narrative structure. Television tends to be very rigid and linear: Once it picks a format, it sticks with it, with each episode progressing logically and within […]
Book review: The Anatomy of Curiosity, by Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff
The Anatomy of Curiosity, due out this October, is a must-read for two completely different (though intersecting) reasons. Well, actually, three. (I’m a liberal arts major, give me a break.) 1) It’s an outstanding book It really is. The three novellas contained within deal with completely different subjects, and every single one of them is amazing. […]
Respecting Lower Case Stylisation
I’ve stylised my name the same way for over half my life: In lowercase. It’s not unprecedented. Plenty of people past and present, including notable personalities, either prefer to lowercase their names (bell hooks) or use both cases interchangeably (e e cummings/E.E. Cummings). It’s a stylistic choice, but it’s also a matter of personal expression, […]
How to Write a Pitch
I get this question rather a lot, and I think I’ve covered it before, but it’s worth covering again, because, well, I get it a lot. People approach me as a writer and editor and ask how to write a pitch well — since I’ve been published in a variety of places and also read […]
Fanfic As Experience Builder
Fanfic gets a bad rap. It’s unoriginal. It’s derivative. It’s ‘theft.’ It’s pathetic or childish or gross. People who write fanfic need to get a life, and they’ll eventually grow out of this ridiculous phase. The fanfic hate goes on for pages, with outsiders to fannish spaces deciding that because they don’t understand fanfic, or […]
Tips for Freelancers
I frequently get asked to provide advice to people considering freelance careers, often, it seems, in the belief that there is some sort of magical formula that can be followed to catapult into a successful writing career. Alas, the fact of the matter is that while I have been freelancing for seven years now, I […]
Stop Having a Cow Over New Words in the Dictionary, People
So every now and then there’s a news story about new words being added to the dictionary that’s framed as both hilarious and awful because they’re all horribly outré modern words that are all gross and icky. Most of them come from the internet, though others may incorporate other new usages in English. People express […]
On Working for Free
Periodically, this discussion flares up again, especially in the web-driven model of content production many of us work in today, where, let’s face it, freelancers are typically radically underpaid for their work—when they receive payment at all. Consequently, many of us are stuck cobbling bits and pieces of work together in a frenetic struggle to […]