The Crying of Lot 49

If you tried to write a novel last month, you know how difficult it can be. Just finishing a book—no matter how long it takes you—is quite an achievement, let alone in one month. In fact, chances are pretty good that by the end of National Novel Writing Month, many of you fell short, and you closed out the […]

The novel has been the dominant form of literature for centuries, evolving and changing in exciting, unexpected ways over the years. Just when you think we know what a novel can do, a book comes along that does something no one ever thought of before. Every now and then that innovation is so powerful, it […]

You can’t read music. Okay, maybe you can read music, in the sense that you can look at sheet music or a score and your use your brain to translate that into what the song would sound like if played on instruments. But you can’t read music—as in, you can’t write about a band and […]