Category: writing
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Beautiful Sentences: John Scalzi
If you could go back, why would you make the same choices? You already lived that life. John Scalzi, Old Man’s War.
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Beautiful Sentences: Ron Hansen
Wild sleep has tossed aside the gray wool blanket and sheet and twisted her nightgown on her body so that it seems shameless and slatternly. A great gush of blond hair veils her pillow. Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy.
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Beautiful Sentences: David Gilbert
I knew it was heading toward a dark place, but the way he twists the reader into being an accomplice, like you’re the voice in Edgar Mead’s head, that was pretty cool, like the reader affects what’s being read, kind of a Schrödinger’s cat-and-mouse game. David Gilbert, & Sons.
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2017 in rejections (and acceptances)
I’ve upped my submissions a bit from last year, but still below last year. Once again, I fell short of my goal of 200 rejections, but came closer than last year with 160 vs 144. I did manage to set a couple records with my highest ever acceptance rate (4.2%, up from last year’s previous…
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Beautiful Sentences: Ron Hansen
Mariette gazes around the oratory. Each nun stares at the prioress in common. Each stares at her separately. Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy.
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Beautiful Sentences: David Gilbert
Adolescence seems to open a small hole in which the rest of our lives drain. David Gilbert, & Sons.
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Beautiful Sentences: Beth Ann Fennelly
I want to paint in a foreign language. Beth Ann Fennelly, “Berthe Morisot: Retrospective”
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Beautiful Sentences: David Gilbert
He seemed a veteran of—I don’t know, adolescence, I suppose, which like all wars is particular to the combatant. David Gilbert, & Sons.
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Beautiful Sentences: Kevin Sampsell
Those teen years are when the scars happen. The scars you have to tend to the rest of your life, hoping they heal or fade away. Kevin Sampsell, “I’m Jumping Off the Bridge”