Anyone who has been around storytelling or aspired to tell stories has heard that old saw: Write what you know. This advice usually gets interpreted as: Write from your own experience.

I’m calling humbug on that.

For years I have been repeating an obscure but read more

The post Know What You Write appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

In his seminal work of literary criticism, The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom argues that great poets must somehow overcome literary attachment to their progenitors before their own creativity can thrive.

No doubt he will say I am butchering his theory, which is not easily read more

The post Echoes of Influence Down the Garbage Chute appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

This week’s post is on The Huffington Post. Please visit. read more

The post My HuffPo Blog: Hedgzilla vs Finothra appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

My original working title for Cadaver Blues was Mr. Gloom and Pollyanna Fight to the Death. If you’ve read the book, you can guess who Mr. Gloom and Pollyanna are.

In naming the female character, I was searching for a name that was breezy. The read more

The post Naming Names: Mindy Eider appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

Lately it seems like there’s been a lot of attention in the media about the virtues of failure. The trope quite simply goes something like this: You learn more from failure (about yourself, about whatever it is you failed at, about life itself) than you read more

The post Whence Harriet Tubman High? appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

In the novelist’s mind — well, in my mind, at least — tensions exist around the imagining of settings. Should they be places wholly made up, retrieved from memory, visited recently, researched and reconstructed?

These are not trivial decisions, and there is no blanket answer. read more

The post Places: Brooklyn Beginnings appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

Who doesn’t have a blog these days? I wrote the following post for a blog on the website of the mushroom distributor I visited as research for Cadaver Blues. You can find the original post here.

There’s a bit of advice we novelists give to read more

The post The Smell of Money Being Made appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

Before I knew anything about the hero of the novel that would become Cadaver Blues, I had the thought that there weren’t enough Asian characters in genre fiction. Asian immigrants and Asian culture have a significant and growing influence on American culture, but fiction doesn’t read more

The post Naming Names: Phuoc Goldberg appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

The Brandywine Valley, where I live most of the time and where I’ve set Phu Goldberg’s adventures, has a number of interesting features. read more

The post ‘Shrooms Along the Brandywine appeared first on J.E. Fishman.

I wasn’t planning to post this week, but my daughter gave me a poem for Christmas that moved me to tears, so I thought I’d share. May it move you, too. read more

The post Must Be Meant to Be appeared first on J.E. Fishman.