How to Fix Problem Passages

Is there anything more beautiful than a clean white screen, emphasized by the zen metronome of the cursor? It's foreboding and perfect, and if you're like me, you can spend hours, if not days, staring at it, contemplating your unworthy humanity in the face of its innate vastness and wholeness.

Somehow (and I don't know how) we find the courage to tarnish this landscape with the yellowed sweat of our very human words We walk in the snow with our keyboards, and, much to our surprise and delight, create a promising first paragraph. Everything is precise and sparkling for a couple of pages. "This time will be different," we tell ourselves. "My writing really has a new clarity."

Wisdom From Adelle Waldman

When you're writing a novel, you're not exactly filling a niche. The number of non-book readers has almost tripled since the 1970's. Half of American adults read fewer than five books this year. On top of all that, there's been a recent slump in fiction - readers are going for memoirs and (cringe) self-help books instead.

The novel is dead, and here we all are, insisting on birthing zombies.

3 Anytime Alternatives to NaNoWriMo

I have a compulsive but very human need to attribute all of my failures to some sort of systemic flaw instead of my own own shortcomings. This is normal, but as a twisted subliminal penance, I've become obsessed with finding some alternatives to National Novel Writing Month.

Here are my top 3 choices for year-round literary productivity.

If You Didn't Win NaNoWriMo, Come Sit By Me

I have failed. I didn't win National Novel Writing Month. I have not borne 50000 words over the past 30 days. I, in fact, have not even come all that close. Why?