We all tell stories. All the time. To make sense of the stimuli created by our senses, the brain creates narrative. “Minds seeks patterns,” David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, says in his often troubling book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. What makes it disturbing is that Eagleman is not a philosopher or a psychologist;…
Fuck! And now that I’ve established my bona fides, let’s get to today’s topic: naughty words. They aren’t new, these verbal no-nos. Virtually every culture has had them, though their content, even allowing for translation glitches, is not always the same. (My doo-doo is your Number Two?) I don’t know how far back on civilization’s…
New Pulp Author Sean Taylor’s Bad Girls, Good Guys, and Two-Fisted Action blog hosts a regular writers rountable. This week’s topic is Killing or Kissing the Muse — Writers on Finding Inspiration. Joining Sean this week is a writing who’s who on a subject we’re all passionate about. Read all about it here. The muse….
One of the pleasures of the Internet and of Facebook in particular is that sometimes old friends find you or you find them and you get a chance to re-establish old bonds. One such for me is David Downs who I knew in my Loyola University theater days. Recently, he was asking about my writing…
First, check out John Ostranderâs column, found somewhere near the stuff youâre reading, and then imagine me shouting Amen into the Grand Canyon and listen to the seemingly endless echoes and finally consider this a small gloss on Johnâs work. John cites the old how-to-write chestnut: Write what you know. Okay, first a slightly snarky…
One of the primary rules for writing is “Write what you know.” As I’ve discussed before, the corollary question becomes “what do you know?” I can write characters that, on the surface, are totally unlike me because underlying there are elements that true for both of us. Granted, I need to get the details of…
The annual running of the bad prose has come again, with the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest announced Monday. (Yes, that page is apparently official, even though it looks like something that crawled out of 1996, and not before dying, either.) In honor of the “dark and stormy night” feller, the judges of the…
Table Talk is Back! Pull up a seat and strap yourself in for another edition of Table Talk, the (semi) regular column where New Pulp authors Barry Reese, Bobby Nash, and Mike Bullock answer questions and offer their viewpoints on a wide array of topics relating to New Pulp Fiction. This time out, the guys…
After a hiatus the likes which will never be seen again, the Boys of Pulped! Are Back! This week Tommy Hancock hosts fascinating guest and author Lee Killough, author of Checking On Culture: An Aid to Building Story Background! Published by Yard Dog Press, this book is A MUST HAVE for anyone writing today! Tips…
The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers co-founders Lee Goldberg & Max Allan Collins are pleased to announce the 2012 nominees for the Scribe Award, honoring excellence in media tie-in writing, and the naming of author Kevin J. Anderson as this year’s Grandmaster for his lifetime achievement in the field. Anderson is the author of…
Ah, the joys of writing. Well, not when you’re working on your capstone project, the culmination of the past 18 months, the paper that will lead me to that walk down the aisle in mortarboard and gown to the hallowed, somber notes of Pomp and Circumstance. How did that get to be the graduation processional…
I leaned across the desk and shook his hand. “Congratulations, young man,” I said. “You scored in the ninety seventh percentile on the comic book writing aptitude exam and so you’re my new Batman writer. I’ll need twenty-two pages by the end of the week.” He smiled and left my office. A moment later, I…
