Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for December, 2011

Shop Talk |

Bookish Gift Idea #20: Heated gloves

by Celeste Ng

I am perpetually cold, and it’s especially a problem when I’m writing. Cold fingers are stiff fingers, and whether I’m typing or writing longhand, stiff fingers are slow. Result: typos, time wasted correcting errors, paragraphs where I have no idea what I meant to say, train of thought quickly derailed. If your writer-friend suffers from the same affliction, perhaps these heated gloves are the solution. They’re fingerless for easy typing and plug into the USB port of your computer. Available from Perpetual Kid, they warm your hands 10 degrees in 5 minutes and also come in a snazzy purple or […]


Shop Talk |

Journal-of-the-Week Winners for A Public Space

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured A Public Space as our Journal-of-the-Week, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Kelly Luce (@lucekel) Kristy Strick (@cstrickwrites) Maureen Sherbondy (@msherbondy) To claim your free subscription, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!


Essays |

Present Everywhere, Visible Nowhere: Flaubert’s Eye for Detail

“What a bitch of a thing prose is!” Gustave Flaubert wrote in a letter to his lover Louise Colet in 1852. “It’s never finished; there’s always something to redo. Yet I think one can give it the consistency of verse. A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.” In this essay, contributing editor Travis Holland meditates on Flaubert’s influence and legacy in fiction.


Shop Talk |

Bookish Gift Idea #19: The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

by Celeste Ng

Did you encounter The Mysteries of Harris Burdick when you were a kid? If so, you probably remember Chris Van Allsburg’s eerie black-and-white illustrations and the evocative sentences—each the merest sliver of a story—that accompanied them. When I was in fifth grade, my teacher asked us to choose a picture and write a story to go along with it. I chose the one to the right, which was titled “Archie Smith, Boy Wonder” and bore the caption, “A tiny voice asked, ‘Is he the one?’” No, I’m not going to share the story. But the fact that I remember the […]


Shop Talk |

Bookish Gift Idea #18: Littlefly Rings

by Celeste Ng

Maybe yesterday’s minimalist book ring wasn’t your style. Want to wear the words you love—literally? Littlefly, a UK-based jewelry company, offers these gorgeous gems by designer Jeremy May. Explains their website: Littlefly paper jewellery is made by laminating hundreds sheets of paper together, then carefully finishing to a high gloss. The paper is selected and carefully removed from a book, and the jewellery re-inserted in the excavated space. Each piece is impossible to replicate, and is unique to the wearer. The beauty of the jewels extends within the piece: text and images pass all the way though the object, only […]


Shop Talk |

Bookish Gift Idea #17: Minimalist Book Ring

by Celeste Ng

Jeweler Metalnat offers this minimalist interpretation of a book, in sterling silver. I love that the “pages” are open—full of possibilities: It’s intended as a ring, but it would also be beautiful as a pendant on a chain, or as a mini-work of art on your writing desk. Actually, it reminds me of Anne Lamott’s one-inch picture frame—a useful reminder for any writer to keep in mind. Available on Etsy. Check back here at the FWR blog every day in December for another bookish gift idea!


Shop Talk |

Naming Names

by Celeste Ng

I was once in a workshop where a fellow student had written an entire story with no proper names–the main characters were referred to just as “she” and “he” for fifteen or so pages. Most of the class felt the characters needed handles: to make things clearer to the reader, to make dialogue less awkward, to make the characters feel like real people rather than abstractions. All of these things were true, but I sympathized with the author. I hate naming things too. In the internet era, at least, you can find help. Long common among writers of sci-fi and […]


Reviews |

[Reviewlet] In Caddis Wood, by Mary François Rockcastle

by Anne Clinard Barnhill

A good place to die? Mary François Rockcastle’s second novel In Caddis Wood unfolds as call and response between a husband facing terminal illness, and his wife of more than thirty years. What does it look like to draw strength from a shared past, even as the future dwindles?


Shop Talk |

Bookish Gift Idea #16: Mental Floss T-shirts

by Celeste Ng

For the delightfully dorky ones in your life, may we suggest these punny T-shirts from Mental Floss? Celebrate your love of hyperbole, homonyms, punctuation, cliches, or idioms. And for the younger set, there’s this onesie: All shirts are available at Mental Floss. Wear. See who laughs. Find kindred (dorky) spirits.


Shop Talk |

Bookish Gift Idea #15: Portable laser keyboard

by Celeste Ng

In case you doubted it: we live in the future. I think this dawned on me when I got a smartphone shortly after my son was born. Suddenly, despite having a babe (literally) in arms, I could still read my favorite blogs and newspapers. I could still get my email. I could even read books and spent an entire month working my way through the complete Sherlock Holmes—in fifteen-minute segments, during my son’s naps. But the one thing a smartphone isn’t very good for is actually writing. Sure, you can take notes or jot down a sentence when a great […]




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