Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘writers on writing’

Shop Talk |

Help during "The Long Haul"

by Celeste Ng

So maybe Tuesday’s post on the 10-year novel got you down. Here’s some encouragement: lit site The Rumpus is introducing a new occasional column, “The Long Haul,” featuring writers reflecting on the (long-term) writing life. Or, as the editors put it: Whether you’re a literary wunderkind whose first book was a bestseller, or one of the thousands of writers who have to claw their way to a sustainable career, the writing life requires patience and resilience, a commitment to faithfully staying the course though the course sometimes offers little encouragement or reward. And yet we do it; we pass up […]


Shop Talk |

FWR on WCBN-FM Wednesday at 4:30pm

by Anne Stameshkin

We’re excited to announce that FWR Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin will be this week’s guest on “Living Writers”, hosted by T. Hetzel. “Living Writers” airs every Wednesday at 4:30pm on WCBN-FM Ann Arbor. Tune in to hear him discuss Fiction Writers Review, his own writing, the Inside Indie Bookstore series he publishes in Poets & Writers magazine, and other topics on writing. You can listen to the show at 88.3FM in Ann Arbor, or hear it streamed live at wcbn.org. Recent guests include poet Dean Young, author and comedian John Hodgman, fiction writer Yiyun Li, and Granta Editor John Freeman. Archives […]


Shop Talk |

A decade in the making…

by Celeste Ng

On Slate.com, Susanna Daniels reflects on the process of writing her first novel—which she describes as “the quiet hell of 10 years of novel writing”: During my should-be-writing years, I thought about my novel all the time. Increasingly, these were not happy or satisfying thoughts. My “novel” (which had started to wear its own air quotes in my head) became something closer to enemy than lover. A person and his creative work exist in a relationship very much like a marriage: When it’s good, it’s very good, and when it’s bad, it’s ugly. And when it’s been bad for a […]


Shop Talk |

Janet Fitch's Rules for Writers

by Celeste Ng

We’re writers! We’re creative souls! We love original thought! But for some reason, we also love lists of rules—especially rules that tell us how to write (and how not to write). Call it one of life’s great paradoxes. The most widely disseminated list is probably Elmore Leonard’s rather prescriptive catalogue of things to avoid (“Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue”). Many authors, before and since Leonard, have tried to boil their advice down into neat bullet points, with varying success. But Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, has posted her own “10 Rules for Writers,” and […]


Interviews |

Starting with Small Moments: An Interview with Andrew Porter

by Polly Stewart

Polly Atwell talks with Andrew Porter about how crafting stories is like editing film, what particular advantages peripheral narrators can afford, and why it’s “completely surreal” to hear actors read from your work.


Reviews |

The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, by Hesh Kestin

by Michael Rudin

Prior to writing his novel The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, Hesh Kestin mastered all things non-fiction, serving as European bureau chief of Forbes and war reporter for Newsday before founding two newspapers himself—the Israeli daily The Nation, as well as the prize-winning expatriate, The American. A career crafting leads and managing word counts has shaped Kestin’s fiction in a distinct way: though written richly, it never wastes a cent.


Interviews |

Honest Travelers: An Interview with Marie Mutsuki Mockett

by Lee Thomas

As a young girl, Marie Mutsuki Mockett accompanied her father to antiques fairs and art galleries, observing lively debates over Japanese lacquer and porcelain. Her talent for zeroing in on the telling detail, as well as a connoisseur’s appreciation of the aesthetic tradition of Japan, both blossom in her debut novel Picking Bones From Ash. Lee Thomas sits down for a conversation with Mockett that spans child prodigies, the downside of unlimited freedom, the upside of nonprofit publishers, and the nature of travel.


Interviews |

Unanswered Questions: An Interview with Dan Chaon

“I’ve always felt personally and emotionally closer to the searchers, rather than to the finders…to those who don’t get answers, as opposed to those who do. For me, the experience of epiclitus is closely related to the experience of the uncanny, but also to the experience of complex and problematic emotions, like yearning, and awe, and psychic unease, which are of particular interest to me. That precipice of endless uncertainty, of the impenetrable—those are the moments that I’ve always loved in literature, as well as the moments that have haunted me in life.”


Interviews |

Writing with Intuition: An Interview with Hannah Tinti

by Charlotte Boulay

Hannah Tinti was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, a place she credits with having influenced the darker side of her fiction. Charlotte Boulay talks with the much-admired author and editor about the influence of art in her work, how writers find their subject matter, her editorial approach at One Story, and trusting your gut during the drafting process, among other subjects.


Shop Talk |

Much Better Than Setting Fires: Chuck Palahniuk at "The Muse and the Marketplace"

by Celeste Ng

Grub Street is an independent not-for-profit writing center in Boston that runs writing classes as well as an annual literary conference, The Muse and the Marketplace. At the most recent Muse, Chuck Palahniuk was the keynote speaker, and even if you missed the conference, you can watch his speech below. Palahniuk tells the story of a very bad night in Paris on book tour and offers some possible metaphors for writing, as well as advice on eating cheese in France (!): Chuck Palahniuk from Grub Street on Vimeo. You can also listen to last year’s keynote address (in MP3 format) […]




Literary Partners