Saturday, June 17, 2017

15 Famous Authors Share Their Favorite Books of All Time

Piers Anthony: 
Rationale of the Dirty Joke  by G. Legman
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Edwidge Danticat:
Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Vieux-Chauvet
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Lydia Davis:
Orient Express by John Dos Passos
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Joan Didion:
Victory by Joseph Conrad
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Jennifer Egan:
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
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Deeanne Gist:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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John Grisham:
All the King's Men by Robert Penn
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Stephen King:
The Golden Argosy, The Most Celebrated Short Stories in the English Language edited by Van Cartmell and Charles Grayson
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Ann Lamott:
Middlemarch by George Eliot
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Simon Rich:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
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Rainbow Rowell:
The World According to Garp by John Irving
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J.K. Rowling:
Emma by Jane Austen
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George Saunders:
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
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Gary Shteyngart:
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
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R.L. Stine:
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
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Tell us about your favorite book in the comments below.

Related Article:
22 Authors Answer the Question "Why Do You Write?"

Friday, May 26, 2017

Quiz Yourself on Overcoming Writer's Block

Image by Patrick Tomasso.
Struggling with writer’s block? 

Try answering these yes or no questions. 


  • Should you wait until inspiration strikes you to start writing? 
  • Should you turn on the television, music, and other distractions while writing? 
  • Should you waste time trying to write a perfect first draft? 
  • Should you check your e-mail or social media while writing?     
  • Should you scroll up a few pages and reread what you’ve already written for the twentieth time?  
  • Should you wail and moan and bang your head against a wall?               

What’s that you say? No to all of those questions?


Great! Then, it sounds like you already have a pretty solid understanding of the most common problems. (Though understanding these issues and actually avoiding them are two very different things!)


When writer’s block does come a’ knocking, here are some proactive steps you can take to tackle it head on.    

  • Set a daily word-count goal. 
  • Time yourself, and regularly see if you can beat your best times.  
  • Literally turn off your Internet, so you won’t accidentally find yourself surfing the web for the umpteenth time today. 
  • Find a quiet place to write.            

To write especially challenging scenes, you can always try some of these strategies too:    

  • Quickly sketch the scene or character to see if a visual image brings anything new to mind. 
  • Write about what wouldn’t happen in a scene to see if this unlocks new ideas.       
  • Consider the five basic senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and feel.  
  • Trying imagining a scene from a different character or object’s perspective.     
  • Think about which types of writing are most appropriate for the particular scene (e.g., description, narration, and/or dialogue.)
  • Consider basing a scene or character off of a location or person you know in real life.  
  • Interrupt the scene with something unexpected such as a new character bursting into the news with related (or unrelated) news.     
  • Describe a specific object in the scene. 
  • Give the characters something to be do while they speak (e.g., brushing their teeth, picking at a scab, or staring at a computer screen).      

So what are you waiting for? Get to writing! 



Add your ideas for conquering writer’s block in the comments below.


And be sure to share this article with a friend.