Are There Really Only 2 Rules of Writing? The short answer is: Yes. The long answer is: Well… Shall we get into it? The reason we start with 2 rules of writing is that I want the word ‘rule’ to mean something. It’s not a helpful hint; it’s not a suggestion. If you do this,…
Author: Adam Katz
It’s Caturday and We Have Questions
Big Cat and Little Cat spend a lot of time asking the hard-hitting questions, like: “Do you think the view is better from Erika’s keyboard? Let’s wait to find out until she starts trying to proofread one of her poems.” Yup. When you’re a cat, everyday is Caturday and you have questions about everything. Well,…
Watch/Listen/Read
Welcome to this week’s Watch/Listen/Read post where Adam and I (and this week’s writers if they choose to,) share with you what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading during the week. If you would like to write for us but are feeling uneasy about sending in a work of fiction, poetry, etc., contributing to…
Give Yourself Permission to Write
This is a topic that’s dear to my heart. People are likely to look at me (on paper) and think there’s no way I could be experiencing impostor syndrome about my writing. I’m over 450 manuscript pages into a novel. I finished and submitted a 300-page dissertation in 2019 and was granted the degree of…
Watch/Listen/Read
Welcome to the first of our weekly Watch/Listen/Read posts. On Fridays, Adam and I take a few minutes to share with you what we’ve been checking out–or immersed in–during the week. We also invite any writers whose work has appeared on the site during the week to add their suggestions, and we’d love to get…
Baggage
This is the draft of a story I wrote in almost a single breath, and then submitted to a couple of literary magazines. The rejections were polite. One said that there was not enough development of the secondary characters, particularly the father, and that showing up to a party in the wrong clothing felt too…
2 Rules, The Magazine (An Introduction)
You may be thinking about submitting a piece of writing to this magazine. You may be wondering what the guidelines for submission are. The main one is: let’s talk. Let me know you want to submit a piece. Show it to me. If it’s too long we’ll publish it in installments. If it’s a bit…
Writers on Writing: An Introduction
Why are there 2 rules of writing? First of all, what are the two rules of writing? You must make mistakes. You must finish SOMETHING. Ok. So why are there only two? And why those two? It’s because those two rules are just enough to put the power in the hands of the writer. That’s…
London Letters #6: A Tale of Two Pianos
Playing piano is one of the main reasons I am surviving the pandemic. If we recognize (and if you don’t, I have some news for you) that the mind is part of the body, and so emotional health is physical health, then it shouldn’t be surprising that within a few weeks of the lockdown (so……
London Letter #5: “Somewhere Beyond the Sea”
Yeah. I’m not in London anymore. I’m not even in England anymore. But I’m still writing these because there are aspects of my trip I look back on, even at the remove of only a few days, with a warm sense of delight and tranquility and joy. And there are parts I am haunted by….