Alec Clayton When I see links to advice-to-writers, I usually click on them and at least skim the articles, figuring you can never be too old, too jaded or too full of yourself to learn something new. But most of what I see in such articles is old hat, or it’s advice I’m either too lazy or …
Grit Lit is the rebellious stepchild of Southern Gothic. In the ninth grade, Grit Lit took on the entire football team underneath the stadium after practice. At sixteen she got pregnant and dropped out of school. Went back to school as a single parent working nights and weekends and doing her homework in the wee …
From the fall of ’77 to about 1985, Gabi and I published a weekly newspaper called Persons and then a statewide arts magazine called Mississippi Arts & Letters. For the newspaper, I wrote a weekly column that consisted mostly of family stories—retelling things that happened in my childhood. When we had family gatherings at my …
Writers can learn a lot about writing stories by listening to jokes. A good joke well told has all the elements of a good short story. The writer, or teller, introduces the main characters and usually provides information about what kind of people they are with the fewest words possible and then sets up a …
I’m starting this new blog to be able to post things that might not be appropriate for my other blog, “South Sound Arts Etc.” http://alecclayton.blogspot.com/ So what am I going to post here? I don’t know. Mostly thoughts about the art of writing, my own and other people’s. Maybe excerpts from works in progress. Maybe …