Armour Brand Desiccated Thyroid Bottle (c. 1900): The meatpacking empire of Philip Armour and his brilliant scions found a use for every scrap of carcass leftover from production: cheeks and trimmings became sausage; gut, bone and ligament boiled down to gelatin; redder, bloodier entrails were squeezed into cubes of bullion; even bones were burnt to [...]

Here’s a link to In the Red Room if you feel like reading along…. First gloss: story of a man escorting his elderly parents around Sri Lanka. His mother meets a strange young man in the botanical gardens, who invites them all (quite forcibly) up to his villa. They spend a few tense moments alone [...]

After experimenting with a new medium (digital video), I remain convinced that writing conveys character and complexity better than any other I’ve encountered thus far (and I’m including CAVE writing in that). But after watching a couple of television series back-to-back on pirate television stations, I think the best plot-writers are probably working in television [...]

Suggests a structured process of reading and re-reading. The first read is reading as a human, the second as a writer (marking it up), the third re-read is of the last few pages and the fourth focuses on the beginning. Finally the fifth read will hopefully unravel the work’s internal mechanics: the nerves of the [...]

A History of the Future of Narrative: Robert Coover from Scott Rettberg on Vimeo. Robert Coover came to speak with us last week. He’s a writer’s writer for sure, someone who burrows deep into text and wiggles around with it. He lectured on electronic writing, an obscure discipline he’s become an unlikely patron saint of. [...]

Joshua Ferris (of And We Came to the End fame) spoke in class yesterday. He described his reading and writing process and it seemed diametrically opposed to my own. Ferris takes an enormous pad and writes little chunks all over, assembling a narrative from the fragments. Just thinking about writing that way made me uncomfortable [...]

Right now, in faculty rooms across the country, admissions officials are trying to winnow out the next batch of Masters of Fine Arts diploma candidates, America’s presumptive writing elite….

In an effort to streamline the R&D, and eventually production, we are implementing the 40 methodologies of TRIZ – designed the Altshuller Institute. More information will follow. And for my Russian, Ukrainian and Latvian friends:

Alzheimer’s and parents’ deaths lose their force as plot devices/ emotion tweakers after the 100th read or so; Plagiarizing premises’ from famous short stories dilutes their power; Using graduate school as a setting or graduate students as characters seems lazy and boring; Plot remains paramount – well-written plotless stories dominate slushpiles; The ability to convey [...]

Remove dust jackets from hardcover books before use; Drafts should be completed and started over from the remembered remnants; “Real writing” takes place over winter break; Anxiety is normal and should be encouraged (i.e. the productive kind); Workshop leaders will continue to confuse first-person narrators with their progenitors — even in graduate school; Writing about [...]