Scanner : writers

Sloppy Seconds: Tyra's Abusive Relationship

Emily Farris — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:47:00 GMT

Ovarian cancer, which is known as the silent killer because it's so hard to detect in early stages, killed 15,000-plus women in the US last year. But now, doctors are a step closer to developing a way to screen for it. [Us News & World Report]

Mandy Moore and Ryan Adams, who just got engaged last month, supposedly married in Savannah, GA this week. [People]

Gisele would like her new husband Tom Brady to put a baby in her. Right now. [Us]

The worst craigslist job posting of the day? Asking writers to contribute a story with a minimum of 2,000 words for $20 about how they have quit caffeine. One would have to be on some form of caffeine—if not crack—to be willing to write 2,000 words for $20. [Craigslist Kansas City]

In the wake of the Chris Brown Rihanna mess, Tyra Banks is devoting tomorrow's show to the topic of teen dating abuse. And Ms. Banks will add a personal touch to the conversation, though it appears her relationship was more emotionally abusive than physically abusive. [FadedYouth]

Jack Kerouac's New Year's Resolutions

Brian Fairbanks — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:01:00 GMT

Jack Kerouac is dead, so obviously these are what we call "vintage" rules to live by. (In fact, this coming year will mark the 40th Anniversary of the Beat Generation writer's death, which was due to cirrhosis of the liver.)

And while these chunks of wisdom, taken from his Belief and Technique in Modern Prose (or, at least, the style of rapid-fire modern prose he invented and brought down with him), are geared toward writers, they are words to live by in 2009-- so says us:

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside your own house
Be in love with your life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yrself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You're a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

True, we don't understand half of what he says, but everyone can take a line or two and run with it. The man who once wrote "I want to marry my novels and have short stories for children" would have turned 86 this past year.

Via Wikipedia.

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The Worst Writing of 2008 Is So Bad It's... Really F*cking Terrible

Nicole Pasulka — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:48:00 GMT

The winner of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was announced today and-- WHOA! Garrison Spik's writing is so bad it makes the Anne Heche (author of the acclaimed autobiography Call Me Crazy) look like a Nobel Prize winner. But before you assume we're just picking on poor Spik, let us explain.

Named after Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton the writer responsible for such famous drivel as "it was a dark and stormy night" and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," the contest gives $250 to the writer capable of coming up with the worst opening sentence to an unwritten novel.

So how bad is the worst? Check Spik's below passage on, what else but "a New York love," and get a towel cause you're gonna need a shower.

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city, their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

We're also partial to this submission by Dave Ronson of Calgary, Alberta:

"Die, commie pigs!" grunted Sergeant "Rocky" Steele through his cigar stub as he machine-gunned the North Korean farm animals.

Zing! Who knew bad writing could be so good.

Katherine Heigl Drops Out of the Emmy Race?

Emily Farris — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:32:00 GMT

Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl — who won a best supporting actress Emmy last year for her role as Izzy Stevens on the show — has greatly decreased her chances of winning one this year by, uh, removing herself from the race completely. And it appears to be a big "fuck you" to the writers.

Apparently, Heigl just didn't think her role was good enough.

"I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention," Heigl told L.A. Times columnist Tom O' Neil. "In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials," she added.

Now, we're not in the television industry so we don't really know how things work. But we are writers, and we do know that writers have pretty large egos. So we won't be surprised if Izzy finds herself back in that trailer park next season with a crack habit, bad acne and three-inch roots.

[LA Times: Emmy champ Katherine Heigl quits the race, blaming 'Grey's Anatomy' writers]

Does Katherine Heigl Think Judd Apatow is "Sexist?"

Maggie Gyllenhaal Waits for No AMPTP, And Her Hair Does Look Great

Emily Farris — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:11:00 GMT

One thing we can say for the writers' strike, it's making for some good YouTube content. So, how do we get the writers paid and keep them writing stuff like this?