I want to blow my mind with a book, but the publishing world is consistently offering me the literary equivalent of aspirin. Unfortunately, what I want doesn’t seem to fit into those narrow marketing categories which now dictate everything we read. Don’t they know that the biggest blockbusters of the last few decades didn’t fit in either, and that’s kind of the bloody point?
In a recent episode of Lena Dunham’s Girls, Hannah, the main character, quits a lucrative day job writing advertorials, because she’s convinced it will stifle or kill her creative writing abilities and prospects. Granted, this character is only 25 (and often mental). But many people do believe that writing in another style, kills their style. In…
Stuck for a title for that crime novel you’re working on? Or perhaps you have no intentions whatsoever of writing a book, but find yourself preoccupied almost hourly with schemes and plans for murder, mayhem and wildly inventive violence. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a title to go along with your plotting? (Oho! You…
Tara Sparling writes 