All Praise Duotrope, the online, searchable database for writers

Duotrope, a search­able data­base list­ing over 2,000 plus pub­li­ca­tions, is an invalu­able resource for writ­ers like me who need help find­ing a home for their work. That last book or arti­cle you read and were telling every­one about may not have ever been pub­lished if the writer didn’t know what pub­lisher to sub­mit to. Duotrope


More Haruki Murakami in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

The fol­low­ing is more from Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning:
It might be a lit­tle silly for some­one get­ting to be my age to put this into words, but I just want to make sure I get the facts down clearly: I’m the kind of per­son who likes to be


Excerpt from: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

The fol­low­ing is an excerpt from What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning by Haruki Murakami:
Once, I was lying around a hotel room in Paris read­ing the Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune when I came across a spe­cial arti­cle on the marathon. There were inter­views with sev­eral famous marathon run­ners, and they were asked what


The Brothers Karamazov

The fol­low­ing are excerpts from The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Book 1, by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky, the ver­sion trans­lated by Con­stance Garnett:

At the same time, he was all his life one of the most sense­less, fan­tas­ti­cal fel­lows in the whole dis­trict. I repeat, it was not stupiditiy—the major­ity of these fan­tas­ti­cal fel­lows are shrewd and intel­li­gent enough—but just


Joseph Campbell: the Malekula passage to the Land of the Dead

The fol­low­ing excerpts are from Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God, Vol­ume 1: Prim­i­tive Mythol­ogy.
In a myth of the Melane­sian island of Malekula in the New Hebrides, which describes the dan­gers of the way to the Land of the Dead, it is told that when the soul has been car­ried on a wind across the


Anton Chekhov on Writing

The fol­low­ing are some of Anton Chekhov’s words on the art of writ­ing, as first quoted in Francine Prose’s Read­ing Like a Writer:
In my opin­ion a true descrip­tion of nature should be very brief and have the char­ac­ter of rel­e­vance. Com­mon­places such as “the set­ting sun bathed the waves of the dark­en­ing sea, poured its


An Excerpt from Darkness Absolute: The Standards of Excellence in Horror Fiction

The fol­low­ing is from Dark­ness Absolute: The Stan­dards of Excel­lence in Hor­ror Fic­tion by Dou­glas E. Win­ter, a critic and biog­ra­pher of Stephen King and Clive Barker:
If you would excel in this field, remem­ber that a fun­da­men­tal mis­take is to strive to emu­late the com­mer­cial hor­ror novel or story. The bulk of this fic­tion is


An Excerpt from The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

The fol­low­ing is from The Far­ther Reaches of Human Nature (Viking Press, 1971) by the psy­chol­o­gist Abra­ham H. Maslow, as quoted in Sex­ist Stereo­types and Arche­types: What to Do With Them/ What the Writ­ing Woman Can Hope For by Jean­nette M. Hop­per:
“I have learned recently (through my stud­ies of peak expe­ri­ences) to look at women


Excerpts on the Artist’s Way from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The fol­low­ing excerpts on the artist’s bat­tle­fied are from The War of Art by Steven Press­field, who wrote Gates of Fire (NYTimes Best­seller) and The Leg­end of Bag­ger Vance (NYTimes Best­seller).
(The bold on text is my own. )
A Pro­fes­sional
Some­one once asked Som­er­set Maugham if he wrote on a sched­ule or only when struck by inspi­ra­tion. “I write


Excerpt from Burial Plot above Marilyn Monroe, On Sale

The fol­low­ing is from the adver­tise­ment Elsie Poncher put on eBay sell­ing her husband’s bur­ial plot above Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s.
“Here is a once in a life­time and into eter­nity oppor­tu­nity to spend your eter­nal days directly above Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe,” says the adver­tise­ment.
“In fact the per­son occu­py­ing the address right now is look­ing face down on her.”
If you