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Thomas’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Thomas’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Thomas Allbaugh’s Followers (25)
938 books
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20 friends
187,061 books
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1,160 friends
8,774 books
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508 friends
2,391 books
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59 friends
1,015 books
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56 friends
678 books
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84 friends
23,825 books
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883 friends
1,815 books
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43 friends
More friends…
Thomas Allbaugh
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March 2011
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https://www.goodreads.com/tallbaugh
More books by Thomas Allbaugh…
For My Latest Blog
Friends, I’ve had technical difficulties over the last two years with keeping my website functional. Help is on the way. But till then, here is my latest Substack post–fyi. I hope you enjoy it. And subscribe, if you can.
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“I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.”
― The Writing Life
― The Writing Life
“Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.”
―
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.”
―
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Marc, O'Connor and Cheever sound like an interesting combination. Saunders has a new book of short stories out that is great also.
This year I have been teaching lots of O'Connor and Cheever: I hope to continue this trend. I like George Saunders, so I had better read that book.
