Writerly Advice |

Skip to navigation
Skip to main content
Skip to secondary content
Skip to footer

Category Archives: Writerly Advice

The Vonnegut Challenge
Leave a comment
April 11, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

At the writing community Fictionaut, Ramon Collins started in interesting debate on an old issue, a challenge for the modern writer thrown out …
Continue reading

Category: Commentary, Philosophy, Question, Writerly Advice | Tags: anniversary, Bertrand Russell, D. H. Lawrence, David Shields, fictionaut, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Kurt Vonnegut, Matt Robinson, Ramon Collins, Shakespeare, Watch and Ward, Yareah
Bezos Loves Books
Leave a comment
March 29, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

In fact, the Amazon CEO loves them so much that he has just bought Goodreads, a social media site for …
Continue reading

Category: Commentary, Writerly Advice | Tags: Amazon, amen, author, Bezos, book, capitalism, consumer, Goodreads, hate, Hitler, love, publishing, purchase
Net Worth
7
March 24, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Readers of my posts or my fiction may think that I am all over the place mentally, emotionally, procedurally…nothing could …
Continue reading

Category: Facebook, The Picture Goers, TYFYS, Writerly Advice | Tags: blog, Communication, creativity, facebook, forum, google, interview, marcusspeh, network, podcast, post, quote, readers, tumblr, twitter, TYFYS, value-add, writing
Linguistic Cross-Dressing
2
March 6, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

«If I cannot love the typical modern German, I can at least pity and understand him. His worst fault is …
Continue reading

Category: Commentary, Goings-on, Tools, Writerly Advice | Tags: Beckett, bilingual, cross-dresser, culture, dictation, G B Shaw, German, Joseph Conrad, Julio Cortazar, Klaus Mann, language, Lucy Renner Jones, Mad Hatters Review, MadHat Annual, Nabokov, nation, Pei Ying-Lin, Ring, Thank You For Your Sperm, The Atlantic, torment, W G Sebald, Wagner, Walter Benjamin
Summoning Stein — feel the love
2
February 3, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

…a while back on Facebook, when a writer friend said she had difficulty reading Stein after which many other chimed …
Continue reading

Category: Review, Writerly Advice | Tags: Carl Van Vechten, facebook, gertrude stein, Ida, Lesbian, Lynne Tillman, New York Times, Susan Gibb, William H Gass
How do you manage your inner critic?
15
January 6, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Before I disappear once more in my teaching trapdoor, I would like to table a big question about the writer’s …
Continue reading

Category: Question, Writerly Advice
How to start a novel
3
December 9, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

“The world is very big.” Writer and musician Stephen Hastings-King (SHK) said this in a recent discussion on Fictionaut titled “starting …
Continue reading

Category: Commentary, Goings-on, Guest Post, Interview, Writerly Advice | Tags: facebook, fictionaut, flash, formalism, Gaston Bachelard, novel, outline, Plato, political, Rene Girard, sebald, Sigmund Freud, spiritual, Stephen Hastings-King, Tyler Findlay, writing
Aller avec Maigret
4
October 1, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Finished Simenon’s (first) Maigret detective novel: somehow I know that I read this one and many others about the inspector …
Continue reading

Category: Commentary, Review, Writerly Advice | Tags: 1929, Crime, Detective, Georges Simenon, Lucia Joyce, Maigret, Mystery, paris
hipsters having sex
8
September 22, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Speh: «An egg-headed, shoulderless man, a creature from a Beckett novel perhaps, who had a heavy gold coin in his …
Continue reading

Category: 100 Days Of Summer, Metafiction, Stories, The Picture Goers, Writerly Advice | Tags: 100 days 2012, Hipster, puritanism, sex
What does it mean to be published now?
16
September 16, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

I can’t believe that I’m publishing yet another post on publishing. But when David Ackley asked the question last week …
Continue reading

Category: 100 Days Of Summer, Commentary, Writerly Advice | Tags: Alt Lit, Alt Lit Gossip, digital, facebook, fictionaut, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, publishing, Virginia Woolf

Click pic to order...

«At a party, I stood next to a bald guy with a beard who didn’t say anything. I noticed a nearby couple put their heads together and whisper while pointing at me. They were smiling so I went over and inquired if I could help them in any way. “No, not at all,” said the woman, “but listen, isn’t that Sir Salman Rushdie who stood next to you just now? We’re such fans.” The man nodded.»

Excerpt from: My Friend Salman Rushdie, in: Pachydermini Pack 4 (Turtleneck Press); donation dependent download.

«Tara, I look at us in that photo, taken so many years ago, I look at you sandwiched between Tom and me, with our left arms in casts, so ridiculous, it makes me think of music that is ridiculous also, music by Charles Ives with two bands playing against one another, or two melodies backpacking a third, or an instrument entering a dialog of two other instruments like a dangerous stranger. It makes me think of your musical voice and your rich hair, Tara, I’m thinking of you as my ship begins the landing process.»

Excerpt from: Friends, in: In Those Days We, available online at Issuu. Paperback version to appear.

Now at Amazon as paperback and on Kindle. See also goodreads.

"The Remarkable Reinvention of Very Short Fiction," Robert Shapard | World Literature Today bit.ly/Z6B9uN 2 hours ago
discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permal… From #TYFS in @Guardian 4 hours ago
Photo: altlitgossip: Coming soon…a new Steve Roggenbuck book to love tmblr.co/Zd9eyuln2X6k 4 hours ago
Photo: speh: Digital chickens are coming home to roost: Second Life, where my avatar Finnegan Flawnt once... tmblr.co/Zd9eyuln2QfE 4 hours ago
Readers Stories | new: #3 Inge Qunhua, Danish Visions, @SecondLife. bit.ly/16EaB8x 5 hours ago

Follow @marcus_speh

Marcus Speh

(Birkenkrahe) — Storyteller & Professor

I am German writer who lives in Berlin. My short fiction has been published widely. My work has been nominated for a Micro Award, two Pushcart Prizes, two Best of the Net awards and two Million Writers Awards, and a novella of mine was longlisted for the Paris Literary Prize. My short fiction collection "Thank You For Your Sperm" is published in 2013 by MadHat Press. My mosaic novel "Gizella" is forthcoming from Folded Word Press. I have a lush web site at marcusspeh.com (English), I blog on Tumblr und Deutsch auf marcusspeh.de. Join me on Facebook, on Twitter, Pinterest or send me an email.