Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘Celeste Ng’

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Snacks of Great Writers

by Celeste Ng

I think deep down, every writer believes that there’s some magic formula for inspiration. Get the right time of day, the right location, the right kind of pen, even the right sitting or lying position, and bing! Writing Happens. But for some writers, food is part of the magic formula. One of my writing teachers used to swear by Cherry Coke—and wouldn’t drink it unless she was writing, for fear of using up the magic. For me? Red candy: Swedish fish are best, but Twizzlers will do in a pinch. To that end, artist Wendy MacNaughton provides this illustrated guide […]


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How to write more: Blackmail yourself?

by Celeste Ng

Perhaps, like many of us, you’re the kind of person who won’t do anything without a (proverbial) gun to your head. But it’s hard to type while holding a gun to your own head, no? Leave it to technology to solve this problem: enter Aherk!, which describes itself as a free “goal-oriented self-blackmailing service.” Now in beta testing, Aherk! has three basic steps: Define a goal. Tell us what it is that you want to achieve and set a deadline. Put your ass on the line. Upload a compromising picture that will be posted to Facebook in case you fail […]


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A Public Service Annoucement About Book Suicide

by Celeste Ng

So we know how books are born, how they fall in love, and what they’re up to after the bookstore closes for the night. But did you know that books sometimes think about ending it all? It’s sad but true. What drives them to despair? This display I spotted in Porter Square Books has the answer: The Origami Poems project suggests a poem as a cure—but perhaps you’d better add a short story too, just to be on the safe side? Further Reading: Jersey Shore a la Oscar Wilde Lit and TV have a clandestine affair at the brilliant Slaughterhouse […]


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A Moveable… Writer's Workshop

by Celeste Ng

Lots of people read on the subway. But how about writing on the subway? The NY Writers Coalition recently offered many the chance to do just that–by transforming a subway car into a free writing workshop! With pens and paper in hand, a group of writers on the #7 train wrote from Times Square to Flushing, reports the New York Times: After leaving Manhattan, the train emerged from its tunnel and rose along elevated tracks into the bright sunlight in western Queens. It was an unconventional writer’s space, with the train rumbling into a new station every few minutes and […]


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Stories We Love: "The Showrunner"

by Celeste Ng

I’ll be totally honest: I really did not expect to like Frankie Thomas’s “The Showrunner” at all. It starts off at a casting session for a fictional Disney-esque tween series, and not only am I biased against stories that saturate themselves in current pop culture—I tend to like a little patina on my cultural references—I expected the story to be as flimsy as the TV show at its center. I was completely wrong. Within half a page, I was unable to put the piece down. (No joke: I was late to pick up my son from daycare, I was that […]


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Get Writing: The Backwards Telescope

by Celeste Ng

When I was in high school, I took a playwriting class, and we’d sit there–all of us sixteen, seventeen, eighteen–reading our work aloud around the table. Our teacher, who was about thirty, would give us pointers: that speech is clunky; this character hasn’t said anything for ten minutes. But sometimes he wouldn’t say a word: he would look at us, hold his palm in front of his face for a moment, then let it drop to the table, as if he were offering us an invisible treat. We didn’t really understand this Zen gesture at the time, but I can […]


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Cooking from writing about eating

by Celeste Ng

When I was in elementary school, I used to read at the dinner table (my parents were just happy I was at the table!) and I’d always save particular books for mealtime perusal. Specifically, they were books that made me hungry with their descriptions of food. There was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, in which even a meal of yesterday’s bread with a smear of salt pork fat was treated as a feast. There was Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family, which was my introduction to foods I wouldn’t taste until years later: hamentaschen, challah, latkes. And in Jean Craighead George’s […]


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Books in the… tub?

by Celeste Ng

Here at the FWR blog, we have a thing for books: as furniture, as clothing, even in the bathroom. But this might just take the proverbial cake: a bathtub made of books. Neatorama pointed me to the above amazing art project/feat of book-engineering by artist Vanessa Mancini, at Who Cares About That?: This bath is made entirely out of books which Vanessa cut and fitted together over a metal frame to form a bath of books, which is suspended by four antique bath tub, lion-shaped feet. She intends to later cover it in layers of resin and has already applied […]


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Verb your authors

by Celeste Ng

Click on over to Urban Dictionary and you’ll soon be Faulknering.  At least, according to one of that dictionary’s definitions of “Faulkner,” which is “To go from being a nerd to getting all the hot girls.” Apparently, kids these days are giving authors’ names new meanings, and Urban Dictionary—the mass-edited compendium of language as it’s popularly used—is capturing them.  The New York Daily News has a roundup (via): Keats: One who has much intelligence, yet is reclusive and worryingly geeky. Enjoys exercising excessive control over friends and family. Wears leggings. Eats pizza only. Bronte: A girl of her own sexiness, […]




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