Category Archives: The Writing Process

Wish Wires

After fifteen years in,
what you must know now.

1 September, 2010 – 8:29 am | By Josh Berthume | Posted in Poetry, The Writing Process | Comments (1)

Essay: Wishing and Burning and Quitting and Starting

Just go to sleep, I think. Nothing left for you tonight but a late start tomorrow. It is 1:26 AM on my mother’s birthday, and it is another night in North Texas with temperatures below freezing. As it is February, that may not seem like remarkable, but it has been a cold new year so …

26 February, 2010 – 11:46 am | By Josh Berthume | Posted in Short Stories, Long Odds, The Writing Process | Comments (0)

Fail File: McSweeney’s Lists #2

Got this back on the Rejection Express today. I think I’m just not getting the tone quite right, even though I think the lists I’m submitting are funny at an appropriately advanced level. Failed Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Games By Josh Berthume Rappers of the Caribbean – Errrbody on the Boat Gettin’ Scurrrvy Bob Saget’s Entourage …

24 August, 2009 – 7:27 am | By Josh Berthume | Posted in Fail File, The Work, The Writing Process | Comments (0)

The Ideal Editor – Writer Relationship: A Chat Log

Joe: You can’t have an overabundance of earthquakes. One is too much.
One earthquake is an overabundance.

1:07 PM me: But they are tiny adorable earthquakes!

Joe: And earthquakes don’t abound.
I don’t think you can have an overabundance of anything that isn’t a physical thing.
Can you have a surfeit of wind?
ANSWER ME THAT MOTHERFUCKER

29 July, 2009 – 12:44 pm | By Josh Berthume | Posted in Fail File, Language, Short Stories, Long Odds, The Work, The Writing Process | Comments (0)

Drinking Beer The Wrong Way

( I have rescued the first two paragraphs of this from something I wrote last summer, something begun and never finished.  The rest is likewise not a real narrative but rather a collection of stuff, much of which is from a notebook I’ve been writing tiny bits in since last century. It is leather-bound and …

25 April, 2009 – 12:07 am | By Josh Berthume | Posted in Short Stories, Long Odds, The Work, The Writing Process | Comments (0)

You Will Enter A Contest. (Duck: che`-on)

I have been collecting literary / writing contests lately, and most of them are pretty cut and dried: type, style, genre, word count, deadline, etc. You do occasionally find something very interesting, though. Geist is a good book, and they have launched an example of such a contest: The Geist Fortune Cookie Contest First Prize: …

23 March, 2009 – 9:22 pm | By Josh Berthume | Posted in The Work, The Writing Process | Comments (0)

Fail File: McSweeney’s Lists #1

Part of being a professional writer is being rejected. I thought it would be informative to show you what things I’ve submitted that get passed on for publication and to tell you why, if the editor was kind of enough to let me know. This was my first ever submission to McSweeney’s which, as literary …

16 March, 2009 – 10:28 am | By Josh Berthume | Posted in Fail File, The Work, The Writing Process | Comments (3)