Category: Writing

  • Objects and Force

  • Kerouac’s Genius/Interpreter Theory vs. Jenny’s Genius/Genius Theory

    We’re going to finish up our exploration of Kerouac with a couple of differing opinions on the form “genius” takes. “Let’s examine the word ‘genius.’ It doesn’t mean screwiness or eccentricity or excessive ‘talent.’ It is derived from the Latin word gignere (to beget) and a genius is simply a person who originates something never…

  • Writing the Windblown, Schizophrenic World

    I came across this fascinating book called Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 — which covers the period of time when he wrote his first novel The Town and the City and his second On the Road. Basically, it’s a log of his word counts, which are insanely high (but we talked before about…

  • Lightning, the Lightning Bug, and the Price of Some of Kerouac’s Revisions

    **Be forewarned, adult language/content** Mark Twain once said something like (I don’t have the direct quote in front of me): “the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Agree or disagree, Twain has a point. To illustrate, I give you two passages from On the Road…

  • Charactouac? or Kerouacter?

    “New Criticism locates meaning in the internal qualities of literary works, specifically the unity of their multiple verbal structures. as much as it values unity and convergence, New Criticism eschews authorial intent and historical context as bases for interpretation, although it allows that they might supplement understanding.” ~Joshua Kupetz, “The Straight Line Will Take You…

  • Spatial Reasoning

  • The Kerouac-Ginsberg Letters: You Have to Write More than You Think

    Jack Kerouac attended Columbia University for a while. It was there he met and started hanging around with some other names you may know – most notable fellow novelist William S. Burroughs and the poet Allen Ginsberg. Because we can’t talk Kerouac without talking about his crew, we get a two-for-one mentorship deal! Starting in…

  • Introducing: Writing Desk II

    A couple months ago, the new owners of the Damon Runyon Theatre in Pueblo gave us SET ensemble members an opportunity to dig through their stuff (and if you’ve ever been in a community theatre, you understand there’s always a TON of stuff) and take away whatever we wanted. So we went down to P-town…

  • 7 Things to Think About When Writing the Future…or the Past

    Nora Roberts is best known for her romance novels — all of which move through several genres. You’ve got historical, fantastical, modern, thriller, etc. (I could list and list and list…but you get the point.) But she’s also the creator of the J.D. Robb in Death series. For those of you who may not be…

  • Pace Yourself: Using Nora Roberts’ Insane Productivity to Inspire Your Own

    Writing math is the only kind of math that I do. (I’m a writer, I do words. Numbers are another beast.) I’m constantly figuring and re-figuring how many words I need per day to complete my novel by X date. The date keeps moving because, inevitably, I’ll miss a day or three in my allotted…