COUNTER CRAFT is a newsletter for me to write about fiction craft, publishing stuff, weird books, and other literary sundries. But mostly I’m planning to make it a craft blog in which I can better articulate—to myself as much as anyone else—thoughts about fiction writing. I teach in MFA programs and waste a lot of time on literary twitter, so it seems useful to have a home to better flesh out ideas. (Which I can then repeat in class and on Twitter. The circle of life!)
As a fiction writer, I jump a bit between the literary world and SFF world. You can find my work in The Paris Review, Granta, Strange Horizons, Coffee House Press, Orbit, and a lot of other places.
I’m calling this substack “Counter Craft” because my focus will be counterintuitive craft concepts. You don’t need me to say “show don’t tell” or “make your characters round,” but perhaps it’s useful to hear me say “telling is just as important as showing!” or “you need flat characters too!”
Some samples of articles I’ve written for other places along the lines of what I’m planning here:
“On the Many Different Engines That Power a Short Story,” Lit Hub
“Everything You Wanted to Know about Book Sales (but Were Afraid to Ask),” Electric Literature
“Let’s Stop with the Realism Versus Science Fiction Debate,” Lit Hub
Sign up! Or don’t. I dunno.
