Beth

He’s unlikable, but he’s also the only person on the expedition who actually does anything. He always takes action. I set up, hopefully, the situation where the reader maybe doesn’t like him but they still are like, “Oh, he actually tried to do something!” That’s useful in terms of how we think of characterization, because we’re often led astray by... See more

I was listening to Paramore’s “Misery Business,” a song about delighting in the misery of your boyfriend’s inferior ex and enjoying the thought of them seeing you two together. I really love that song—it’s kind of slut shamey, but honestly, like, I don’t know man, a bop is a bop—and I listen to it before I play tennis to get in a cruel and... See more

Molly: I will say, I do recommend that everyone try the non-chronological form of writing, even if it causes a lot of headaches in the post-production phase. For some people it can be helpful to write about what they’re most interested in at one particular moment, and then to figure out the chronology later.

On a book tour for her first novel, a writer named Christine hears from the man who inspired it: a former painting professor who went from being her mentor to, briefly, her lover. After they slept together, he mostly stopped talking to her, and she quit painting. In her novel, she’s so angry that she kills him — in real life, she mostly just... See more

I still can’t wait to see Cuckoo, Blink Twice, Didi and the new Beetlejuice remake. However, the best movie of the summer *might* be Guillermo del Toro live-tweeting about paranormal activity at his hotel in Scotland, where he’s shooting a new Frankestein adaptation.

As soon as he arrived, GDT camped out in a room that someone else had already been... See more

From the ribs up, there’s no xylitol pain, and ribs-up is where the tender will most be enjoyed, mouth and the top of the stomach. Might as well have some pleasure in the mouth. I am not someone who finds stomach pain to be an appetite suppressant. Physical pain and food pleasure are two radio channels I can listen to simultaneously. The food might... See more

Thanks for being here and for being nervous with me. I hope this week you see a bird you’ve been looking for, that you get to do a few of the things you love, and that if you love bran muffins you don’t feel shy about it.

So I did what (some) autistic people do: I dug in my heels, and I got my receipts.