Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 12
July 7, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Grammar, Schrammar
As a general rule, the last person you should be consulting while writing is a grammarian. Usage guides? Certainly. But grammar? If you haven’t learned it by the time you’re starting your novel, chances are it’s too late. One goes to war with the army one has. But in case you are still anxious about …
June 30, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Snoopy Kept Trying
When we think of Snoopy and writing, we think of that determined beagle hammering away at his sentences, trying to figure out how to follow his opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Not an easy task. But he also had to face rejection. One of the great Peanuts strips showed Snoopy writing …
June 28, 2024
Reader’s Corner: ‘When the Clock Broke’
I wrote about the great new John Ganz book, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, for The Millions: Americans are good talkers these days. Prodigious at least. Our screens and links and tabs are filled with it. Talk, talk, talk. Streams of mouthy TikTokers and …
June 24, 2024
Screening Room: ‘The Accountant 2’ Anybody?
After 2016’s extremely baffling action flick The Accountant found new life on Netflix and has a sequel on the way, I took a look back at the original. An updated version of my first review is at Eyes Wide Open: Back in April, the most popular film on Netflix was The Accountant. Subscribers were not clicking on new …
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June 23, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Get Out of the Way
Prolific British playwright and screenwriter David Hare (Skylight, The Hours, Straight Line Crazy) sits right at the intersection of acclaimed and popular. (Which, let’s be honest, is where most of us wouldn’t mind being in our careers.) He is both thoughtful and economical, meaning there is a lot he has to teach. Hare’s ten rules …
June 16, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Get It Wrong to Be Right
Last year, playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar—Disgraced, the brilliant Homeland Elegies, the upcoming Robert Downey Jr. AI play McNeal—gave the Whiting Awards keynote address on the theme of what is expected from artists. He talked specifically about one of his mentors, theater director Andre Gregory, and the challenges that success presented. Yes, boo-hoo, every struggling …
June 9, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Create Characters Who Are Nothing Like You
Ayelet Waldman is not the first to note that it doesn’t make sense to only write what you know. But she does put it particularly well here: When writers only write what they know, we end up with lots of short stories and novels about young people falling in love for the first time, often …
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June 2, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Have the Courage to Be Terrible
People like Anne Lamott are asked for advice on how to write all the time. It’s what happens when you inspire people. That’s why it was so refreshing when she asked about what was the worst writing advice she had ever heard: To know what you’re doing in the very beginning of having started something …
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May 26, 2024
Writer’s Desk: Act Like You’re Working
Self-image is important for most people. Writers, being denizens of the mind, sometimes like to think we are above that. But what’s true of everybody else, is just the same with us. Part of gaining the confidence necessary for writing is feeling like you are a writer. That can involve giving yourself pep talks, making …
May 20, 2024
Reader’s Corner: Four New Graphic Novels
A round-up of some great new graphic novels ran in this Sunday’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune: These four graphic novels tell compelling stories, from a girl navigating life’s chaos through horror comics to a compilation of often misunderstood comic strips and from the meta-comedic struggles of a compulsively self-referential novelist to a frank memoir of historical trauma …
