Colleen Morrissey

Send me your best prose by Valentine’s! ❤️

Just finished TENTH OF DECEMBER, have come to the totally unoriginal conclusion that George Saunders is prob the greatest living American writer.🤷‍♀️ Generically, his style is not one I usually enjoy (heavily voice-driven and spare on setting) but he's just so good at doing it with heart, I must stan.

I love how tech guys just keep making the internet worse. Like, yeah, let's make this place uninhabitable. Let's drive people back to touching grass and consuming analogue media because the internet is so unpleasant and slop-filled. I'm rooting for you, kings.

I mean, it's like 9 pm on a weeknight, and it would significantly shorten their journey, so, yes, I fear they do 😭

Spent a few hours yesterday researching and writing out what two characters are seeing/encountering on a long train ride followed by a walk through downtown Chicago to get to Northerly Island.

Then, later that day, while doing an errand, I remembered…

They have a car.

THEY HAVE A FUCKING CAR.

When we were first dating, my husband and I amused ourselves by rewriting "Must be Santa" as "Must be Satan." Now our toddler loves the original song, and I have to work SO HARD not to sing, WHO'S COMING FOR US WHEN WE'RE DEAD? SATAN'S COMING FOR US WHEN WE'RE DEAD!

Snowstorm on campus today led to closure around noon, and as I was leaving my building, I encountered 2 under-dressed French students filming the snow with appalled delight, and I was glad of my minuscule French that allowed me to immediately understand when one shouted, "ça c'est foutu!"

I appreciate that there's a whole subgenre of holiday music that's basically "it's cold outside, guess it's time to fuck"

The grim reaper using a lawn mower.

Sometimes, revising sucks, but sometimes it feels like this:

Rewatching The Craft for the umpteenth time, and I know I'm not the first to say it, but--justice for Nancy.

Me @ me writing tense, climactic dialogue in which one character disillusions another:

Same! I couldn’t finish it, and one of my favorite movies of all time is Midsommar

My 2-year-old daughter has become obsessed with witches, so yeah you could say I'm a great mom

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

this is gaslighting, plain and simple. No, it's not the worker producing workslop, it's the fucking AI!

Had a dream where an undergraduate creative writing class read the first chapters of my WIP and absolutely hated it, with some even finding it offensive, so, you know, I’m closing in on finishing a first draft

There are very, VERY few people who are equipped to talk about this shooter correctly given the brainrot written on the shell casing. You have to understand so much of online culture to get it and also understand how that culture is both connected to and separate from real world ideological spaces

Had a lovely (and not pretentious) convo with a barista today about whether hot shots of espresso or cold brew is better for iced lattes, and this is why I love indie coffee shops. This guy full-on cared that I had the best beverage possible.

(Java Break in Lawrence, KS btw)

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Send me your prose!

Love Mona Awad!!

Brought to you by today's searches for "ingenue," "financier," and "sateen."

What people think writing is: Hunching over your desk and furiously scribbling or typing out the burning song of your soul.

What writing actually is: Staring into space and googling definitions of words you already know but just want to make sure you actually know.

Wesley Snipes pointing a gun with tears streaking down his face, a stoic mask of an expression hiding his torment.

Staring down another whole chapter that will need to be cut from my WIP.

My husband and a collaborator had an NEH grant canceled earlier this year too, for which work was already underway. Just cruel.

Fuck. I didn't apply this year because I suspected this might happen. There is absolutely no respect for the work people already put in to this strenuous application process, let alone the creative work.

Right???

My Depression-born, farm-raised, youngest-of-eight-children grandma used to make me bread and butter for a snack. That's it. Bread and butter. And I DEFY you to come up with a better savory snack.

Lol, bless your child heart