Assorted & Sundry Writing

Largehearted Boy: playlist for The Book of Disbelieving

I can’t write while listening to music—I need cleared head space—but I love the cathartic release that music helps me attain after an hour of concentration at the keyboard.  Often, I choose a walking song that supplements whatever writerly mood I’m in at the moment.  Sometimes, something brooding and pensive. Sometimes I go for euphoria.   

Electric Literature: 9 Books with Fabulist Worlds that Push Boundaries

“The novels and story collections that I’ve included in this list range in scope, setting, tone, theme, and method, but they all do something similar: create worlds that defy expectation, that challenge our conception of the ordinary, that renew our understanding of the “fabulous.” But in all these authors’ work, the fabulous is not invoked merely for the purposes of sensationalism—as in The Book of Disbelieving, reality is being manipulated or exaggerated for thematic purposes, to explore some element of our shared collective existence that might have otherwise gone misunderstood or unappreciated.”

Washington Post: essay on the ethical and political complexity of mendacity

“If we want to inspire future leaders to be creative, we must figure out how to harness the liar’s ingenuity and bravado — the fearlessness in the face of reality and willingness to assert that what has been accepted as true might not be the truth after all. To do this without lying — to go beyond reality while maintaining a grasp on the distinction between fact and fantasy — that is the visionary’s calling.”