Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

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"The writer is not the writing"

by Celeste Ng

Recently, the New York Times tackled the burning question of why authors tweet. One main reason? To connect with the reader, of course: For one thing, publishers are pushing authors to hobnob with readers on Twitter and Facebook in the hope they will sell more copies. But there’s another reason: Many authors have little use for the pretension of hermetic distance and never accepted a historically specific idea of what it means to be a writer. […] Jennifer Gilmore (3,463 followers) finds hearing from readers helps her understand the influence her novels have on them: “On Twitter, I have a […]


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The loooooong sentence

by Celeste Ng

When Twitter arrived on the scene, its proponents found themselves defending the very short. James Poniewozik put Twitter in historical context, and, in the New York Times, writer and teacher Andy Selsberg argued that writing short could make you a better writer. Now, in the L.A. Times, Pico Iyer writes a defense of the very long sentence: I’m using longer and longer sentences as a small protest against — and attempt to rescue any readers I might have from — the bombardment of the moment. […] Enter (I hope) the long sentence: the collection of clauses that is so many-chambered […]


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One Letter Missing

by Celeste Ng

Oh, the difference a single letter makes! The recent Twitter hashtag #bookswithalettermissing marks hilarious (and sometimes brilliant) titles like: @CodeNameTanya: Notes on a Sandal @KBreathnach: Civilization and its Disco Tents @SPLBuzz Harold and the Purple Rayon @EditorEric: The Mon Is a Harsh Mistress: Heinlein’s memoir of a relationship w/Jamaican transvestite dominatrix @atbennet: Far from the adding crowd: a little something for the math-phobic @GetUpInFront: “F” Mice and Men. Steinbeck’s middle finger to the plight of the migrant laborer. The Huffington Post has a great roundup, and you can search Twitter for the latest. Share yours with us!


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The secret lives of literary characters

by Celeste Ng

I have a theory that in 50 years, or maybe even 20, scholars will be studying a new form of fiction that’s just beginning now. It’s not exactly narrative, nor is it strictly prose. In fact, some of it isn’t even stories. But it involves imagining the secret details of characters’ lives, articulating their thoughts and fears, developing their voices and diction and tone. Unlike typical fanfiction, this new mode of storytelling often use social media or other unconventional means, as if the characters themselves were real people living in and interacting in our world. For lack of a better […]


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"The Call of the Domestic" and other Less Interesting Books

by Celeste Ng

For the past few weeks, book-loving Twitterers have been amusing themselves by coming up with Less Interesting Books. Here are a few of my favorites: The Devil Wears Hush Puppies (@TheJaneChannel) To Give a Mockingbird a Stern Talking To (@andrewvanorden) A Farewell to Arms: Coping with Amputation (@waltonky) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Glendale Galleria (@peteFweiss) The At-Times-Slightly-Unpleasant-But-Altogether-Perfectly-Manageable Lightness of Being (@mattmclowry) A Couple of Years of Solitude (@joefi) The great thing about hashtags like this is people keep coming up with more. Search for the #lessinterestingbooks tag on Twitter for more, and tell us yours in the comments. Via. […]


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Joyce, Twitter. Twitter, Joyce.

by Celeste Ng

In honor of Bloomsday, the literary project Ulysses Meets Twitter is conducting an online reading of Joyce’s masterpiece today (@11ysses). Says the project’s website: This is not an attempt to tweet mindlessly the entire contents of Ulysses, word-for-word, 140 characters at a time. That would be dull and impossible. What is proposed here is a recasting or a reimagining of the reading experience of this novel, start to finish, within the confines of a day-long series of tweets from a global volunteer army of Joyce-sodden tweeps. Can you imagine such a thing? Would it be horrific, a train wreck? Or […]


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Five Ways to Celebrate Short Stories

by Erika Dreifus

Here at FWR, we’re certainly doing our collective best to honor the art and craft of the short story this month. But there are lots of ways that each fiction writer can celebrate short stories individually. Here are five possibilities: Participate in #StorySunday: Reminded each Sunday by @TaniaHershman, short-story fans are encouraged to share a link via Twitter to someone else’s short story using the hashtag #StorySunday. Quick. Painless. Free. Click here to see the latest #StorySunday tweets. Listen to Selected Shorts: As its brand-new website explains, Selected Shorts “is a weekly public radio show broadcast on over 130 stations […]


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"When you have only a sentence or two, there’s nowhere to hide."

by Celeste Ng

Twitter turned five this week—an event celebrated by some and bemoaned by others. Is the (very) short form killing or helping our communication? Writer and teacher Andy Selsberg argues that learning to write short can make you a better writer: I don’t expect all my graduates to go on to Twitter-based careers, but learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently, is an incredibly useful skill, and more in tune with most students’ daily chatter, as well as the world’s conversation. […] So a few years ago, I started slipping my classes short writing assignments […]


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Quick, why do you write?

by Celeste Ng

Can you explain why you write in 140 characters or less? In response to a question by agent Jason Ashlock, hundreds of people have been trying with the hashtag #whyIwrite on Twitter. Here are some of their responses, which range from the humorous to the downright profound: ANaderGretly: #WhyIWrite Because it’s an excuse to do research on strange subjects, i.e. Serial killers and forensic psychology. ANaderGretly: #WhyIWrite Because I’d rather be a poor writer, than to be a wealthy engineer. RJSWriter: #whyiwrite 2/2 so by passing what we _can_ see through the lens of imagination, we hope that some of […]


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Book-Length Sentences: The Antidote to Twitter? (And does Twitter need an antidote, anyway?)

by Celeste Ng

That basic unit of literature, the sentence, has been getting a lot of attention lately thanks to Stanley Fish’s new book How to Write a Sentence. In it, Fish makes an argument that sentences are to writing what paint is to painting: But wouldn’t the equivalent of paint be words rather than sentences? Actually, no, because while you can brush or even drip paint on a canvas and make something interesting happen, just piling up words, one after the other, won’t do much of anything until something else has been added. […] Before the words slide into their slots, they […]




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