At long last I’m returning to the blog after a summer (and then some) of, well, screwing around. In this post, I expand on some remarks I made in answer to a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “M.F.A. Fever.” The column takes up the challenges of advising students who seem to have…
I'm still on my summer hiatus for a few more weeks, but wanted to follow up on an earlier post about why I've abandoned writing on a computer and returned to the typewriter. In that post, I noted the word processing program on your computer is itself an impediment to productivity. How so? Ease of…
The following is a draft excerpt from my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. The novel is haunted by the character of Jacques Rigaut, the French dadaist, gigolo, drug addict, dandy, and suicide. At irregular intervals throughout the novel, we listen in on the interior monologue of Rigaut on the the night of his suicide.…
The Writer and Pynchon's Concept of "Twinning" So, here I find myself arrived at that stage of life in which the passing of the sands through the hourglass has evolved beyond hoary metaphor into palpable reminder of my long sacrifice of calling to day job. I seem daily to grow more desperate and panicky over…
I seem to have always been drawn to fiction you might say is "out there." This seems to have had an influence on the way I write my own fiction. I can't point to any particular approach or technique I've adopted from the authors I admire (beyond the typically derivative affectations common to most beginning…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 