In the classic conversation between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, transcribed in the book The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell says, “A lot of people who write stories do not have a sense of their responsibility. These stories are making and breaking lives, but…the kind of responsibility that goes into a priesthood [the responsibility of [...]

In a Facebook message this week, a friend asked, “Do you buy that there are only two types of fiction stories: a stranger comes to town and a hero goes on a journey?” I wrote back, “Yes and no. But it will take me longer to explain.” This is my explanation. First of all, any [...]

I am not an electronic artist. I can’t construct a poem that both comments on and is presented through the tyranny of the computer screen, as Justin Katko does with “Up Against the Screen Mother Fuckers,” nor can I build a Google Map to tell the story of gentrifaction, as J.R. Carpenter does with “In [...]

Genre is, to my mind, the delineation of a boundary between and around literary works determined by the intellect’s instinct for perceiving integritas and consonantia, which I would do well to let James Joyce explain: — In order to see that basket, said Stephen, your mind first of all separates the basket from the rest [...]

In a couple of weeks, Literature & Latte will release a major upgrade to Scrivener, a market-upending, writing application they first launched back in 2005/2006. The software has received incremental improvements throughout the intervening years (including one major release at version 1.5), but this is the first upgrade the company feels comfortable charging its existing [...]

A piece of fiction writing—a short story, for example—has two distinct elements to it. The first we can call synchronic, which means existing at one and the same time; the second is diachronic, which means existing through time. <p>Or to put it another way, a piece of fiction writing has both <em>structure</em> and <em>flow.</em></p> <p>Fiction [...]

If it is true that “only a fool believes what he reads in the newspapers,” then the task of the creative nonfiction writer is to accomplish the same goal as newspapers — i.e., to communicate a partial, yet objective truth — but to do so with a richness that only a fool could deny.