This will be the first in a series of maddeningly good authors giving advice on writing. Enjoy.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

4. Be in love with yr life

5. Something that you feel will find its own form

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea

19. Accept loss forever

20. Believe in the holy contour of life

21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better

23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

29. You’re a Genius all the time

30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Pop Chart Lab breaks down the taxonomy of movie monsters, from oogly to googly, from the classic to the very weird. Look at a larger version (like, huge) here.

If you like it, buy the print here.

Deckfight also has this thing called “Deckfight Press,” which is a literary e-chap press. We find some writers, turn out some short books by them, in PDF form & digital formats. Our new one is by Mel Bosworth & Christy Crutchfield called The Five Lost Senses of Carl.

Deckfight has this thing called Deckfight Press, a literary e-chapbook press. They churn out really good material, by really good writers, for free. Their latest is The Five Lost Senses of Carl by Mel Bosworth & Christy Crutchfield.

Download the free PDF with awesome art.
Download the free epub/other digital editions.
Buy it for the Kindle just because whatever.

Also, if you missed it: it’s free. We like free stuff.

Think of what you know about book art. Now think again. Wary Meyers Decorative Arts is a husband and wife design team who create breathtaking installations made of, and centered around, books. Take a look:

Seating made from ink drops:

View more of their work and learn more about the team here.

I geek on poetry in unexpected places (for example: this). Even more, I love poetry that was never supposed to be poetry. Suddenly: oops, you’re a writer.

Case in point: The New York Times‘ Alan Feuer digs into the NYC Craigslist Missed Connections and finds poetry in the listings from Occupy Wall Street. The words are copied verbatim, with only line and stanza breaks added. The titles are the subject headlines.

Beautiful Asian

I was all dressed in blue for a reason.
Standing in front of Capitol One Bank
at 6 av at about w39 st
on Sat Oct 15 late afternoon.
I was with my work partner
standing in front of the Bank entrance
when you and a friend stopped
and asked us a question.
I thought you were so beautiful
that I was speechless.
The Occupy wall Street march
was coming up the Street
and you asked us a question about it,
and then all too soon
you were gone and the air
seemed a little cooler
as if the Sun had suddenly
gone behind a cloud.
If you recognise yourself
please please please
get back to me so that
I can at least know
if you are attached or not

You are a Cop

I was only visiting the city
during the protest
was with my mom
in Time Square
we chatted about why
I was visiting
and where I was from.
I wanted to ask you
for your number
for a good last hoorah before I left…
but I chicken out.

Hoyt/Schermerhorn G

This weekend.
You had
an occupy wall street poster.
I had
a book.

Librarian at Occupy Wall Street

You seem pretty great.
It seemed like a bad idea
to even attempt to flirt
when you’re trying to do
something substantive like that,
so I thought I’d just post here.
Just in case you might see it.

Occupy Rosa Mexicano

Hi Rebecca,
Do you want
to
get
a
drink sometime?
Jonathan

More here.

Click the image to see a zoomable, moveable, and especially beautiful history of science fiction.

Learn to insult like Shakespeare, thou beslubbering, fen-sucked wagtail. You artless, boil-brained, apple-john. You pribbling, tardy-gaited, bladder. I could go on.

There’s also an app for that.

I write because I have to write. I write because I am in love with the world. I write because my tongue is too wet and sloppy a tool for the elegance of language and because I feel more comfortable speaking through two splayed hands, through the pianoing dance of my fingertips. I write because the world is created through language and story and because I have a role to play in weaving the future. I write because I believe in the human beings around me with a passion so intense and so vivid and so bright that I can’t help but want to reach them, and I want to reach not just them, but every future generation, and to tell them to keep trying and dreaming and striving, because it is worth it, and because the only way we can know each other is through these stories. I write to discover myself. I write because there is no other way. I write because I would go crazy otherwise. I write because I am crazy. I write because I need to make sense of the hideous intricacy of the universe. I write because I am happy. I write because I am in pain. I write because of the sheer joy of it. I write because sometimes it is the only thing that keeps me here. I write because, right now, I am breathing, and I can feel the beating of my heart within the rise and fall of my ribcage and I write because moths drink the tears of sleeping birds.

—Orhan Pamuk

My favorite quote about writing, and why we do it. Today is the third annual celebration of the National Day on Writing. In honor of the day, the National Writing Project is hosting the “Why I Write” project, which you can learn more about here.

So tell me: why do you write?

Yeah, that one. There was one more left in the series. And it was, we humbly think, the best of the bunch, so we aptly saved it for last: book blogger extraordinaire Maud Newton summarizes the classic novel Crime and Punishment in 60 seconds.