Sitemap - 2012 - Woman of Letters

Everything Else

Everything is fine

Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens

Retrospective on my First Semester in an MFA Program

Traffic to my blog has increased by 250%

Another year of writing statistics

My slush-reading stint has ended

Index of books that I blogged about (or just enjoyed) in 2012

My mixed opinions about Huckleberry Finn, Robinson Crusoe, the Best American Essays, and Tender Is The Night

The Week of Capsule Book Reviews Continues With Another Day of Predictably Good Books

Predictably Good Books (that I read in 2012), Part One

Surprisingly Good Books, Part Two

Books I Read In 2012 That Were Surprisingly Good, Part One

Strange Horizons has just published my first book review

Inaugurating Wrap-Up Season 2012 (oh, also, I watched the Blind Side!)

"Inside The Mind Of The Bear" is the IGMS cover story; "Next Door" will be reprinted in Wilde Stories 2013; and my Friday links!

I do not use shame and anxiety to motivate myself

The Small House at Allington (by Anthony Trollope) and Election (by Tom Perrotta)

Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids (by Alexandra Robbins)

Notes on "Association of the Dead"

My Schedule for DarkoverCon

Some Awards Season Mentions for "What Everyone Remembers"

Friday Links

Changing Places and Small World, by David Lodge

Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë

Taking This Blog To The Next Level

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie

On teaching "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Three SF Books I've Read Recently That Had Gender-type Themes: Dragonflight, The Stepford Wives, and Conjure Wife

Just received my nine hundredth short story rejection

Waiting for the hurricane; Wired magazine; David Lodge; and more submissions stuff

Submitting to literary journals

The difference between good writing and great writing.

John Williams' _Stoner_ is the best novel that I've read this year

Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens

Sold a story--"Inside the Mind of the Bear"--to the Intergalactic Medicine Show

Why you should donate money to Strange Horizons

Is there value to being locked out of the canon? (part two)

Professor Kanakia's Guide to Submitting Your Fiction (and some other stuff too)

Is there a value to being locked out of the literary canon?

Getting up at 7 AM every day is kind of awesome

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Problems In My Life That Have Recently Been Fixed By Scotch Tape

I have a strong desire to achieve another triumph

I am in the Baltimore Sun

Two Journal-Based YA novels: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Sloppy Firsts

My upcoming appearances at the Baltimore Book Festival (Sept 28-30)

Even though, in general, a person should always try to pronounce names correctly, I personally don't care if you mispronounce my name

Being willing to learn whatever the instructor is able to teach

The Nap Option! (plus, a lexicography of napping)

Three Books, Six Paragraphs: Drop City, Framley Parsonage, and The American

On becoming a worse writer

An illustration of my super sophisticated time management techniques

Who I Am and What I Do

Notes from the First Week of an MFA Program

Upon beginning the revision of my new novel, I realized it was kind of...poorly written

On _almost_ selling a story

My story "No Victims" is live in the first issue of Lamplight magazine.

What do you do when the writing isn't easy?

Jo Walton's, _Half a Crown_ is good fun, but it's not quite the fascist dystopia I'm looking for

I love Wired for exactly the same reason that I hate the New York Times

No books, no stories

"We Planted The Sad Child, And Watched" is live at Daily Science Fiction

My very first horror sale! Sold a story--"No Victims"--to Lamplight

Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford

Reasons for reading five or more of an author's books (with statistics! and lists!)

On living alone

My favorite alternate-histories are the ones set in the world where everyone is gay (i.e. Jo Walton's Farthing)

An infographic of my writing career thus far

The statistics of inspiration

Sold stories to Futuredaze and Nameless

Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene

Status Anxiety and the Semi-Successful Writer

On being back in D.C.

Old School, by Tobias Wolff

Sold a story--"Next Door"--to the Diverse Energies anthology of YA SF

The time has finally come for me to read Revolutionary Road

I don't believe in moderation

And The Band Played On, by Randy Shilts

Stranieri, by Tristan Gans

I write about "My Stephen King Problem"

I've gone one full year without missing a day of writing

My vague and overly-general goodbyes (which also include a long overdue thank-you to Brian)

I've just freed myself from the tyranny of duotrope

Sorry Y'all

I summarize blog entries on: the quality of writing in chicklit novels; Scalzi's Redshirts; and David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself

I love Chicklit--over the weekend, I read books by Helen Fielding, Sophie Kinsella, Melissa Bank, and Emily Giffin

Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

Life is too short to waste time on boring books

The Beardmancipation Proclamation

Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West

I think that Tom Clancy's The Hunt For Red October might be the most uncool English-language novel

A little bit more about that novel that I just finished writing (oh yeah, it's called _Boom_)

The Collected Poems, 1909-1962, by T.S. Eliot

The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin

Let's Talk About Love: A Journey To The End Of Taste, by Carl Wilson

My story--"The Snake King Sells Out"--is in this month's issue of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show

My thoughts on the plot differences between the book and TV versions of the second season of Game of Thrones

Scattered thoughts on the second season of Game of Thrones

'X' marks the spot

"Against Interpretation" and other essays, by Susan Sontag

Three pretty good stories that were published in April 2012

God's Harvard, by Hannah Rosin

The Pillow Book, by Sei Shonagon

The Feminine Mystique and dillettantism

The Feminist Mystique, by Betty Friedan

Why We Can't Wait, by Martin Luther King Jr.

Distrust That Particular Flavor, by William Gibson

Aborting the novel

Why Video Games Matter

My story "Tomorrow's Dictator" has just been published by Apex Magazine

Hey everyone, don't expect anything out of me for the next fifteen days. I am writing a novel.

Reading literary essays

Why I'm going to stop giving out writing advice

Pursuit of Love, by Nancy Mitford

What does it mean to be against the canon?

My eight hundredth short story rejection

Three pretty good short stories that were published in March 2012

I read another one of Anthony Trollope's bricks, and I enjoyed it quite a lot

Where I get my stories from

The Application Process

Which Schools Should You Apply To?

Why You Should (And Shouldn't) Apply To MFA Programs

I've just accepted an offer of admission to the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University (in other words, I'm getting an MFA!)

Sold "An Early Adoption" to Redstone Science Fiction

Sold "The Snake King Sells Out" to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show

Alot of so-called hypocrisy and irrationality is just due to the problems of making decisions while in possession of incomplete information

In which I write about the first book in The Hunger Games trilogy

Confessions of a Pick-Up Artist Chaser, by Clarisse Thorn

Coming to grips with the worst-case scenario for my writing career

Coping with my own desire to always be in the midst of writing a totally awesome story

A hint of writing difficulties that used to be really common for me

The First and Last Novels That Made Me Cry

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Thought engendered by my return to computer gaming after an absence of two and a half years

February 2012 Short Fiction

The best book I read in February was Arlie Russell Hochschild's The Second Shift

Curing my insomnia

Revising that old stuff

The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene

Made it to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

Midnight in Paris was fun but trite

To me, it's no surprise that Dharun Ravi is refusing to accept a plea bargain in the Tyler Clementi case

As of today, I'm reading slush for Strange Horizons

Four pretty good short stories that were published last month

The Warden, by Anthony Trollope

There should be a National Coming-Out Day for people whose favorite novel is _Atlas Shrugged_

"What Everyone Remembers" in Clarkesworld's mid-month podcast

"The Driver" is live in this week's Nature

Sold "Tomorrow's Dictator" to Apex Magazine