Popular fiction gets itself published and read by combining creativity and freshness with mastery of convention. It colors creatively inside the lines drawn by genre, convention, and craft lore. Literary fiction gets itself published and read by being intelligently unconventional. It colors freely over and outside the lines of genre, convention, and craft lore that shape popular fiction. In today’s fiction marketplace, that is the smallest nutshell into which the difference fits.

One of the questions that comes up from time to time in critique group is this: What is literary fiction? How does it compare to genre fiction and by what criteria should it be critiqued? Here’s my humble contribution to that discussion.

There’s a dictionary that often appears near the top of search results.  Here’s why you shouldn’t trust it.

I saw an interesting blog post the other day from a writer talking about her Frankenstein method of plot outlining.  This brought a smile to my face, as I can identify with both the problem she describes and her eclectic solution.   I’ve recently returned to writing fiction after what looks to have been about a 16-year hiatus.  It’s hard for me to believe it’s been that long, but that’s what the evidence I’ve uncovered in recent weeks appears to show.   Of course in that amount of time, you accumulate a lot of old hard drives, etc.  Even with the most hygienic of intentions, it’s easy to end up with too…