It may be the end of summer, but the WITTScasters aren’t letting the dog days get them down. Brian is writing, Jon is revising, and Ben is submitting. One of them is even going back to school, which leads to a debate about the role of formal education in a writer’s life. But first, the boys turn their attention–if not their powers of pronunciation–to Jodi Angel’s story “Centrifugal Force.”
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Topics and Reading Discussed
- At the time of recording, Jodi Angel’s story “Centrifugal Force” was available for free online at Tin House. That no longer seems to be the case. Regardless, it’s worth seeking out and buying the Summer 2015 issue (#64) in which it appeared.
- While newlywed Brian respects Townes Van Zandt’s creative process of locking himself in a closet on his honeymoon to write “Waiting Around to Die,” he’ll stick to his new-found coffee shop.
- Jon’s trying to avoid stagnation a la Philip Roth, who used the structural exercise of Portnoy’s Complaint to find the voice he would hone in later books like The Counterlife and the Zuckerman novels.
- As if seeing someone brandishing a confederate flag in upstate New York wasn’t depressing enough, Ben also got to the brutal (in a good way) end of WITTScast alum Charles Dodd White’s story collection Sinners of Sanction County.
- If ghost writing could give you a chance to hang out with Pierce Brosnan, then sign Brian up. (Sign him up twice if it’s Nicolas Cage.)
- Purdue alumnus Donald Bain is certainly making the ghostwriting thing work.
- Jon’s been a regular attendee at the James River Writers Conference the past few years. If you see him there, buy him an appropriately suitable drink. Whiskey, maybe?
- Yeah, so… the YA cookbook genre is really a thing.