The other me
by David Benjamin “I just like the idea of trying to write for all those versions of me out there, wherever they are.” —Sherman Alexie “The good writer seems to be writing about himself (but never is) but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself, and all…
Archives
- Write Away – Write about yourself, but not about your self
- The allure of formula in mystery prose
- A novelist’s guide to dining in Paris
- The Elements of Character
- The Ember of Anger
- The Midwest: American Literature’s Diaspora
- The seven keys of storytelling
- Don’t Do It, Kid!
- The agent rejection I’d like to see
- The mirage of the market
- The road to bitterness
- Kid stuff?
- The sacredly profane
- Where do you get your ideas?
- The appeal of the ambiguous
- The first ‘graph Blues
- Why writers talk about movies
- The evolution of a character
- Write Away: The fatal cup of tea
- The nexus of fiction and journalism
- The telling detail
- A nose for news
- Writing in lost wax
- Bill Faulkner makes an elevator pitch
- Cold coffee and hot copy
- When to stop reading a book
- Finding the “Everyman” sweet spot
- Cumulative, agglutinative, intuitive
- Genre: Pick it and stick with it
- Be clever, kid, but not …
- A body of work
- The writer as reader
- The author as housekeeper
- The church-lady factor
- The invisible poetry of prose
- The moment of narrative confidence
- Toying with time
- The author as educator
- The author as entertainer
- The author as expert
- To recur or not recur
- Swimming the sea of metaphor
- Emotional distance and reader empathy
- Satire: Bathtubs and edible babies
- Satire revisited
- The rabbit pellet in the caviar bowl
- Characterization in shades of gray
- Seven Mutations of Recollection
- The aggressive mind
- Why every author needs a gun catalog
- The Kafka thread
- “Where do you get your ideas?”
- The Ed McBain Factor
- The inwardness of the dead-serious teenager
- The other me
- Michelangelo strokes his brush
- Sympathy for the Devil
- The query trap
- The “creative type”
- “A high-concept gritty romantic suspense thriller”
- The paradox of smalltown crime
- The seven species of memory
- Jim Otis’ gun
- “Professional”
- “What’s your story?”
- Characters and types
- “Style” is not fashion
- The magic of “narrative transportation”