Dec 1, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
The holiday season sees a million variations on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, yet this marvelous supernatural tale all too often overshadows the ghostly echoes that permeate Dickens’s entire oeuvre. In John Irving’s book of personal essays, Saving...
Sep 25, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes, Poetry
Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America Tell me what it’s like to live without curiosity, without awe. To sail on clear water, rolling your eyes at the kelp reefs swaying beneath you, ignoring the...
Aug 31, 2023 | Current Ned Note, Horror, On Technology, On Writing, Past Notes, Post-Human Future
A new post by writer Adam LG Nevill is on point regarding the potential effects of Artificial Intelligence tools on creative writing and writers in general. (Here’s a short excerpt posted with the permission of Nevill, with more behind the fold) I’m...
Jun 13, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
On June 13, at the age of 89, Cormac McCarthy passed away at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was profoundly unsettled and provoked by McCarthy’s work, and I found his work to be powerful and insightful. His writing always delved into the darker aspects of...
Feb 11, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Writing, Past Notes
Romance gets criticized for being repetitive – as if repetition is not the way we nourish our bodies and souls. Meals are repetitive: You have to keep making them and eating them and then making and eating them again. Song lyrics repeat every time a chorus comes...
