In our Roundups segment, we’re looking back at all the great posts since the blog started in 2009. We explore posts from our archives as well as other top literary magazines and websites, centered on a certain theme to help you jump-start your week.
We’ve hit the dog-days of summer, dear readers, and the mercury is climbing. As the days get hotter, we dream of fleeing to the beach or the mountains or our back porches to relax and take a break. Vacation is not only good for us as humans, but it can also be good for us as writers. So this week Ploughshares bring you a roundup on taking your writing on vacation.
To combat the siren call of summer laziness, The Loft Literary Center offers “4 Ways to Keep up Your Writing Habit this Summer.” Useful for both your focused and beach writing.
Like many people, I’ve been thinking about the past few years a lot lately. Instead of looking at political events, I’ve been looking at stories and movies. Mostly I’ve been thinking about Wes Anderson and Stefan Zweig.
Brit Bennett talked with me about her new novel “The Mothers,” and about the power of place–writing in the West through many communities–“performing California-ness,” the weird excitement for wildfire season, forever building piers into the ocean, and In-N-Out burger.
Descriptions of rumination demonstrate how to pause and reflect in order to get to something more essential in the character’s psyche, something that couldn’t be expressed with either action or dialogue—or couldn’t be expressed as powerfully.
