More than 200 pages into my novel Housebreaking the Muse, I’m starting to look for clues concerning the work it’s trying to accomplish. You see, I try not to force themes, but rather discover them as the work unfolds, then refine my ideas through the revision process. I know the notion is likely not much…
Catching Up With Mark Seinfelt’s “Word Patriots” (Again)
Summer fast receding in the rear-view mirror, I'm doing my best to turn my attention back to writing and all things literary. While I was giving in to summer's distractions and the demands of a home made chaotic by renovation, Mark Seinfelt soldiered on with Word Patriots, creating great webcasts with compelling writers week after…
Craft Note: Kickin’ it Old School
A Quiet De Luxe, it is, banged together by a worker preoccupied with discovering the subconscious mechanism by virtue of which his recurring nightmare of The Battle of the Bulge accommodated the delicate gesture made every day by the newspaper guy he passed on Farmington Avenue, a beseeching and weary opening of the hand that…
Housebreaking the Muse: Enter Raymond Queneau
This summer has been regrettably saturated, disruptive, and shambolic. Pulled by life in too many directions, I've been operating in a fog where everything gets some of my attention but never the amount it deserves. It has been, for me, a failed summer. And, oh yes, the world seems to have gotten even madder (are…
Craft Note: When You Can’t Write, Read Your Work
Like many writers, particularly writers of innovative fiction or fiction otherwise out of the mainstream, my writing contributes zero to my ability to pay my bills. Consequently, I have to fit my writing schedule around my job. Of course, my life involves more than just writing and job, and I think all of us can…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 