Writing About the Use of Drugs

Why write about drug use in a blog about fiction -- other than the fact that drugs figure in many stories and not always in a convincing fashion? Many authors seem have characters taking drugs because transgressive behavior appeals to readers looking for vicarious thrills or an escape from ordinary, presumably boring life.

But at the same time it is a serious real-life issue, particularly at present with the opioid crisis. Today, The New York Times ran a feature story about what seems to be an growing epidemic in largely white middle class America --among the folks who used to be thought of as the bedrock of U.S. society.

The Challenges of Writing About Sex

As we all know well, sex sells and that as much as anything else is probably why it looms as large as it does in a lot of fiction.

But how exactly to write about it, or even more difficult, how to depict it, is a challenge for writers.

Early last year, Literary Hub, staged a single-elimination style tournament for "literary sex writing."  Such prose, I observed at the time, evidently stands in sharp contrast to ordinary old sex writing and as such, may be considered a high-minded, as opposed to a prurient, activity.

Writing in the Internet Age: Quantify Yor Skills

Want to get a job as a writer in the Internet Age?

Katherine Power

Here's what one potential employer, Katherine Power, chief executive of Clique Media Group, a media and marketing agency, wants to see:

"I look for people who can quantify their value, who can really think like an entrepreneur and put a value around their skill set and growth. So if you look at a resume of someone who was a lifestyle writer for XYZ publication, I like to see that they wrote 16 pieces of content per week resulting in X percent growth in page views over three months," she told The New York Times in a "Business Day" interview.

There you have it: ever-increasing page views -- a metric that would leave me, well, unemployable!

An Interesting Notion About Uncertainty

Uncertainty is the condition of being in doubt, or being in possession of imperfect information. Which fork in the road leads to one's destination?

I'm speaking metaphorically because in the age of smart phones, one can generally easily determine the correct geographic route.

Many of us experience from time to time, if not perpetually, an uncertainty about life -- if not its fundamental meaning at least how we should go about living, or what exactly we should do to accomplish something.

This can be very frustrating for some, but perhaps actually rewarding for others.

"I think people give a lot of spiritual credence to uncertainty, to not knowing," contemporary author Maggie Nelson said in an interview with The Creative Independent. "That's exactly how it should be, but it doesn't mean that not knowing is easy," she went on  to say.

Identity Politics Viewed As A Threat To Fiction

During the recent presidential election, America arguably shifted significantly from policy-based political affiliations to affiliations based on cultural and racial identities.

Most notably working class whites living in the so-called Rust Belt states switched in significant numbers from the Democratic candidate for president to a man running as a Republican even though he had attacked the GOP establishment as aggressively as he was attacking the Democrats.

Why Writers Hesitate to Criticize Publishers

The publishing industry is obsessed with money and celebrity yet writers hesitate to criticize it because in the current environment, their prospects of earning a living are so poor.

That's the view of Jessa Crispin, who I also wrote about in my previous post.  Crispin has been in the news during the past year because she shut down her pioneering literary blog "Bookslut" after 14 years.

How Internet Advertizing Impacts What Gets Written About

In an interview last May, Jessa Crispin told "Vulture" why she was closing down her literary blog "Bookslut" after 14 years.

One of the reasons she cited has to do with the changing nature of on-line advertising.