Ye Olde Writing Life

Fun with words and images: Cryptichs

June 20, 2010

For the past couple of months, Fred “spitballarmy” O. (whom you may remember from the “Under the Tree” collaboration last winter) has been posting strange three-image combinations at unpredictable intervals on Twitter. Today those poetic triads (via Fred) have launched a Twitter #hashtag and Web site called Cryptich (that’s cryptic mixed with triptych, a word for [...]

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New article at PopMatters: “Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders: 6 May 2010 – New York”

June 15, 2010

A live concert review I wrote last month is now available on PopMatters: Hawkins imagined Red Light Fever as sounding like me having sex with my record collection, but delivered from start to finish with the same thrusts at the same speed with the same pressure, the music only humps the listener into numbness. Photo credit [...]

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A spoonful of sarcasm helps the medicine go down

January 1, 2010

From Cracking the GRE, a test-prep manual by Doug Pierce: You will also see a fourth, unidentified, experimental section on the GRE. This section will either be Math or Verbal and will look exactly like the real Math or Verbal section . . ., but it won’t count toward your score. ETS [the company that [...]

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Guessing a book by its cover: spontaneous collaboration

December 24, 2009

Inspired by his holiday #cnftweet on Twitter, @spitballarmy and I are making a list of typical (and atypical) gifts identifiable through their wrapping. Check out the booty as it grows under the tree over at Fred’s blog. And come add your own! Have a safe, happy, scary-clownless holiday season, everyone.

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Stewart Copeland talks writing, his memoir, and the Police: My guest post at WordWebbing

November 3, 2009

Day 3 of NahNoWriMo, and already I’m behind on my official unofficial word count—but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. A couple of months ago, the Friday Project offered bloggers the opportunity to pose three questions to Stewart Copeland as part of their Strange Things Happen advertising blitz. Three questions isn’t much, but I [...]

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NahNoWriMo Day 1: 2198 down, 47,802 to go

November 1, 2009

Happy first day of NahNoWriMo, everyone. This morning I took advantage of the extra hour on the clocks to get started on my word count early in the day, but I can see already the disadvantage that certain nonfiction writing has with this kind of writing marathon: the burden of research. Even those details of [...]

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NahNoWriMo: Like NaNoWriMo, only Nah

October 30, 2009

In a couple of days, thousands of crackerjack crackpots will start putting fingers to keyboards to spend four weeks spewing out 50,000 spontaneous words in the global November marathon that is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. (Yes, I’m fighting the urge to add a hyphen.) Every artist needs an excuse/incentive to do their art thing now and [...]

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