Editor’s note: this post is about a British music magazine. If you think it’s about anything else, take your tin foil hat back to Facebook. Last year I went into Harvard Square to look for the final issue of Q. I figured the Coop might have it. Nope. As the manager explained, magazines were sold …
Tag Archives: Writing
No No Song
If there is one matter on which I can speak with authority – or at least experience – it is rejection. I started sending stories out for publication fifteen years ago. For a while I kept count of the rejections. After about a hundred, for the purpose of ego maintenance, I decided to stop. Let’s …
Right Said Fred
I don’t know if it’s the pandemic or what, but the above tweet had some resonance. (NB in the Walter Mitty sense; I have neither the interest nor, probably, disposition to be an assassin.) I’ve been working on a short story and remain displeased with the opening sentence. It’s fine and all, but it ain’t …
ObitCon VI
I went to the sixth conference of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers in Washington, DC. Below are some highlights. I’ve left a lot out, but must record this: it was the best conference I’ve ever attended. Kickers The kicker is to an obit what the punch line is to a joke. Matt Schudel discussed …
ICYMI
Last week I posted individual sentences from books read over the summer. Now I’m going to share with you the one I’ve thought about the most. It’s from Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent, by Ted Morgan: Both were shot, and Captain Gregg played dead while an Indian removed …
Master and Command Module Pilot
Michael Collins, who went to the moon with Neil Armstrong, is also a first-rate prose stylist with a natural feel for detail and a light touch for humor; his book sounds a lot like what you would expect if E.B. White had qualified as an astronaut and flown to the moon. – Margaret …
Pretty Little Liars
When deep night fell, the fishermen paddled out and we watched the horizon slowly fill with little orange lights, kerosene lamps swinging from the bows of their boats. It soon looked like a whole city out there, or like a constellation of stars that had fallen lightly on the surface of the water. It …
Dahl’s Tiger
Years ago I had to read an assigned novel with 5th graders. The book – which I refuse to name, but will allow was written by a famous children’s author – began excellently. On the very first page, two children find a tiger in a cage. Pause to imagine what Roald Dahl would have done …