Advice for New Writers
Blog of the Week: Jeff Goins Writer
Jeff Goins is an unpretentious blogger. You won’t see him writing stuff like the novelist and essayist Jonathan Lethem wrote a week or so back. Stuff like: What’s a novelist? I remove myself from human traffic to sit in a … Read more
The Mystery of a Good Title
I noticed A Streetcar Named Desire played again last night on Turner Classic Movies. And earlier in the day I read that the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote an essay he rather liked titled “Tolstoy’s Historical Skepticism,” which his … Read more
Benchmarking the Top 10 Blogs for Writers
One of the traits I like best about the Webverse is its lack of gatekeepers and credentialing. It reminds me of the American frontier circa 1834. When Abraham Lincoln as a young man decided to make his living as a … Read more
You and Your Godlike Powers
I had a little fit of insight the other night while in my short story class. We were sitting around discussing how our first drafts had turned out. It was the final class—thought of by some as The Dread Reckoning—when … Read more
Writing vs. Social Media
I’m ramping up a new self-improvement program in public this morning. This is a big deal to me, though it probably won’t seem like much to you. Here’s my problem: I’ve determined quite rationally that the number-one thing I want … Read more
What Makes a Great Movie? Notes on Casablanca
The Oscars Week Fest at 317am continues today with the nearly impossible question posed by our title. One way of getting at the issue of great movies would be to collect a list of such films and then extract their … Read more
TED THE CAT
Ted the Cat (1994-present) is a domestic shorthair blogger and vers libre poet. He also enjoys sleeping, eating, and lurking. Ted the Cat co-habits with Kaze,
also a blogger at 317am.net.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Kaze
Kaze is Washington DC area writing guru Steve Altman. The nickname is Japanese for “the wind.” Read more »
RasoirJ
Ras at Texas BBQ in DC, site of lunchtime chats with Kaze on the art and agony of writing. Ras is also known in some publishing circles as George Clack. Read more »