The Raised Eyebrow Is the Lazy Writer’s Favorite Cliche (The Daily Beast)
For instance, the last book I tried to read was The Black Witch by Laurie Forest. It got stellar reviews, and yet eyebrows get a workout in the very first chapter, including: “My eyebrows flew up at this.” “Rafe raises his eyebrows.” “Tristan cocks an eyebrow in surprise.” “Rafe turns to me, raises his eyebrows and grins.”
Black artists fighting for truth, justice and a role in superhero comics (SF Gate)
Black comix — a growing movement of artists and writers creating black-themed comic books and graphic novels filled with black heroes and heroines — and the three-day Black Comix Arts Festival, which runs through Monday in San Francisco. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it moves from the San Francisco Main Library to the fourth floor of the Metreon, in the heart of holiday events downtown.
I let a machine critique my novel (TechRadar)
As a former copy editor, I like to think I have a reasonable grasp of language, but editing your own work is quite different to working on someone else’s. It’s easy to skim over your mistakes and written tics.
That’s why I decided to give Autocrit a go. Billed as “manuscript editing software for fiction writers”, it goes through your work with a red pen, highlighting potential issues with ruthless efficiency.
Amy Tan: ‘Writing it was exhilarating, but I wish it hadn’t been published’ (The Guardian)
What is the difference between your approach to memoir and fiction?
Memoir is unvarnished. In fact, too much so in this case: I would have revised this book numerous more times. In fiction, I’m much more concerned about the sequence of sentences and the flow of the narrative from beginning to end.
‘I often reward writing a thousand words with a latte and eight jammie dodgers’ (Irish Times)
When I say write hungry, I mean without a book deal. Without a literary agent. Without any sort of payment on the table. Without an audience. Without expectation. Writing that way means you can be the most honest you’ll probably ever be. True only to yourself and not to a deadline or editor. I’ve done it four times; my first four novels were written this way.
Waking Writer 