Fault lines and parables
Dear reader, Here’s a sentence: For mothers, some mothers, my mother, daughters are division and sons are multiplication; the former reduce them, fracture...
Make it story-shaped or something
Dear reader, A phrase keeps circling my head and that phrase is “make it story-shaped”. In lieu of knowing what I’m saying, here’s a list: Stories have a...
The ballad of the Lazy Susan
Dear reader, Here’s a sentence: But that tiny spot—like any season, or moon, or theater set; like a cake in a rotary display—invariably spun out of reach and...
The badly named Season 2
Dear reader, I’ve been thinking about how to phrase this in an urbane or witty way but the truth is that I haven’t written a newsletter in so long and I just...
Definitely and inflexibly
Here’s our topic sentence, italics mine: The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call...
...
Dear reader, Here is our topic sentence for today: Notice One of my favourite things about short stories is what they don’t have to be. They don’t have to be...
Conceal everything
Dear reader, Here’s our topic sentence for today, context included and italics mine: She shakes herself, then hides for a moment in the powder room and...
Follow the brush
Dear reader, I have been collecting little missives about what to do as a writer when you don’t know what to do. Like this one from M. John Harrison (via...
Know the rule so you can break it well
Dear reader, Here’s our topic sentence: From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-...
Writing is easy, or at least, not impossible
My current thesis is that writing is easy. Here is a foolproof method to improve your writing: Think of something you want to say.Write a sentence that tries...
It's gifts all the way down
Dear reader, Here’s our topic sentence for today: The true commerce of art is a gift exchange, and where that commerce can proceed on its own terms we shall...
The world were a great mistake
Dear reader, (Welcome to new readers from Sarah Avenir/&yet! What we do here is talk about one sentence from one book, every few weeks—so that we get better...
No action exists outside the context of history
Dear reader, Get yourself a snack, this is a long one: In this same instant the young man froze, the emblems of sense in his wild face wide open toward me,...
Adulting is not a verb that we should be proud of
Dear reader, Here’s our topic sentence for today: Now we are truly adult, we think, stunned that this is what being adult means, nothing at all like what we...
The Unguessable Country
Dear reader, (Welcome to new readers, especially those from Sarah Avenir’s wonderful newsletter. In Topic Sentence, I write about sentences, because good...
Writing is hiding
Here’s our topic sentence: She must have noticed all the perfectness from the bus window because she couldn’t afford the cab fare: Second Street, glinting...
In which we won’t pretend to know what it means
Here’s our topic sentence for today: Then I went back to my own writing, my own inability to get going until five in the afternoon, my animal sense of being...
In which we break things thereby proving we can't have nice things
Dear reader, Here’s our topic sentence: The perfect shatters. This sentence from Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (recommendation via the very...
In which we behave like a metaphor
Dear reader, Hello to new subscribers! And thanks to all who wrote letters of introduction, haikus to welcome this incarnation of your humble sentence-...
In which we assume a new name
Dear reader, (A bit of housekeeping: hello from Substack! This newsletter, formerly known as Bibliopath, used to be sent from Tinyletter, which I still love...