I will be moderating comments (and chiming in occasionally) so don’t let me hold you back.

In case you’re new here (or need some reminding of all the good works we’ve done) here are five popular posts that will demonstrate what we’re all about:

Five Common Writing Mistakes That My Students Make That I Still Make (and You Probably Make Too)

How Do I Start My Writing Career?

Five Thoughts from a Short-short Fiction Contest Judge

The First Ten Books in Little, Brown’s Spring ’09 Catalog

Getting Published Without Querying

“When I’m working on a problem I never think about beauty. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

Have a fine weekend!

Congratulations to Savannah College of Art and Design senior Bang-yao Liu.

You are one ’09 grad who has nothing to worry about.

Download free HEAD CASE: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying To Understand My Brain

Having never heard of the reputable-sounding 4ebooks.org (my bad) I clicked through and found this delightful marriage of attempted digital piracy and spam gibberish:

Dennis Cass, “Head Case: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain”
HarperCollins | 2007-03-01 | ISBN: 0060594721 | 224 pages | PDF | 1,5 MB

Infiltrating the concern of neuroscience, Dennis Cass offers up his possess mentality to “research,” subjecting his nous and embody to automobile shocks, mind-numbing tending experiments, cigarettes, pronounce tests of his possess devising, and the comedy of Bill Maher. Like a slightly off-kilter martyr Plimpton, Cass, in his adventurous exploits, reveals the intricacies of fear, attention, stress, reward, and knowingness from the exclusive out. Along the way, he weaves in the news of his stepfather’s wild incurvation and take addiction, in constituent to his possess problems–which are many. Cass attacks the person of the manlike mentality with humorist and candor, motion favourite power into something distinctly human. Head Case is an clamant feature for anyone who has ever wondered, “Why am I who I am?”

I’m trying to imagine the person who has the technical savvy to sell stolen encrypted computer files, but is unable rip off the sales copy from the HarperCollins website.

Do they have some kind of Soviet-era laptop whose cut-and-paste function introduces error?

Was it dictated by a crack addict . . . to an opium addict?

Or am I just jealous about not having the chops to describe my own work as a “clamant feature?”

Screengrab from the HBO documentary "Living Dolls"

While I understand the sentiment, I’ve always felt that the old writing saw “kill your darlings” suffered from being both overly macho (Ooh, you big bad killer you) and poorly timed (Why not help prevent me from making darlings in the first place?).

Now look at the picture above.

Don’t we all have a story tucked in a drawer somewhere that reads like this poor kid looks?

You’re the boss of your work. You can make it be anything you want it to be. You are in COMPLETE CONTROL.

But don’t be a pageant mom, okay?

Won’t you help fill it back up?

2. I’m woefully off pace for my goal of helping 100 NEW PEOPLE this year.

Won’t you help me re-empacen myself by referring a friend?

3. The New Yorker has a piece on the creative writing workshop.

Won’t you read it and share your passionate/contradictory opinions about it?

4. People in the past were prescient fools.

Won’t you join me in laughing at/admiring them?

Thanks and take care.

This Is Your Wake-Up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing by Jonathan Karp, editor-in-chief of the awesome Twelve imprint. If you are interested in writing a book you will want to read this.

Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir wrote a book called THE FINAL FOUR OF EVERYTHING. To help promote the book, they created a delightful website that allows you to make your own custom tournament bracket for whatever your heart desires.

Here’s mine:

David Bowie vs. Nature

Finally, in the Little Changes Create Big Effects Department, I present . . . Disturbing Strokes:

For my U.S. readers have a fine Memorial Day weekend. Everyone else have a fine regular weekend. For those of you who work nontraditional hours, enjoy your Thursday-Monday work/play time cluster.

See you next week!

Have a greet weekend everyone!

The article is written by author (and friend of DCWYTBMA) Arika Okrent. I had the privilege of seeing pages of her upcoming book IN THE LAND OF INVENTED LANGUAGES and sense big things.

The book has a great hook, fine writing, and facts that astound and amaze. Plus, I predict that every public radio producer in America is going to fall all over themselves to have her on the air. Stay tuned.

Also, fans of British comedy must needs check out THE MIGHTY BOOSH Sunday nights on Adult Swim. I couldn’t even begin to describe it and sense that perhaps its creators might have the same problem:

[Sadly, YouTube won't let me embed this amazing video for the Bouncy Castle Crimp]

Have a fine weekend and good luck working on your first crimp!

Click image (then click again) to enlarge

]]> http://denniscass.com/2009/04/28/writing-advice-from-wolverine/feed/ 5 denniscass Writing Advice from Wolverine http://denniscass.com/2009/04/24/culture-car-has-brakes-but-you-dont-have-to-use/ http://denniscass.com/2009/04/24/culture-car-has-brakes-but-you-dont-have-to-use/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:39:03 +0000 denniscass http://denniscass.com/?p=1000 ]]> Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present:

Auto-Tune the News

Have a great weekend!

DCWYTBMA returns next week. In the meantime, please enjoys these freshly dumped links:

Nick Hornby on the perils of recommending books

The Daily Beast on “Twitterature“

The Minnesota Orchestra invites 60 people to play conductor for a day (audio version recommended)

For those of you who are interested in a more artistic take on “world building” please enjoy the City of Work

Because I take requests, #amazonfail (now with updated link to Clay Shirkey’s blog)

Finally, the awesomely bad video “Shine on Me”:

One reason for the internet break is I spent all of Tuesday morning binging on this:

Greg Rutter’s Definitive List of the 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced on the Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something

Have a fine weekend!

Last night’s Top Chef finale broke my heart.

It was fan (and personal) favorite Carla’s to lose. Not only did she lose it, but she lost it for the worst possible reason. To come so far on the merits of your own work, your own passion and your own voice and then to go down because you listened to someone else is unconscionable.

Season Three Loser Helper was there to be your dog, Carla, not your co-captain. You said you’ll never make this mistake again. I hope you get the chance.

1. Tina Fey for creating an imitation that’s more true than the original
2. Simon Rich for telling animal jokes about human suffering
3. James Wood for making How Fiction Works both practical and idealistic
4. Wii Tennis for allowing me to play a sport I love, but with a giant cartoon head
5. Deadspin for making sports gossip strangely fascinating
6. Rhizome at the New Museum in New York for taking new media seriously, while also maintaining a sense of humor about its ridiculousness
7. MGMT for writing a song that somehow manages to be hippie, meta and danceable all at the same time
8. The Week for making the news easy to digest without making it dumb
9. Virginia Heffernan for thinking deep thoughts about the intersection of television and the internet
10. Nathan Bransford for fighting for better writing while never forgetting that people also like to watch The Hills
11. Moonrat for giving the world an inside look at New York publishing, plus indie rock moments, plus the inspiration for people to go out and save books
12. David Mitchell for writing Cloud Atlas and reviving my love of writing fiction

I know there’s more, but for now there’s not.

Next up: 2008 Year in DCWYTBMA Recap and Thank You

Cheers!