Benjamin Roesch

Author: Benjamin

  • Post #12: I’m Starting a Novel on Tuesday

    NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which I have officially committed myself to.  I mean, I opened an account on nanowrimo.org, so I’m pretty much locked in. 30 Days.  50,000 Words. (2 small children, 1 full time teaching job) There’s over 200,000 other people trying to do this who…

  • Post #11: Assignment Afghanistan

    Elliott Woods is another amazing writer (and photographer) I met at Bread Loaf this past August.  He is a journalist and former soldier who covers America’s war in Afghanistan.  I knew that Elliott reported regularly for Virginia Quarterly Review on the subject and recently discovered a website he’s put together…

  • Post #10: Not Sure How I Feel About This

    My first literary love was Spenser.  No, not the English poet.  Robert B. Parker’s indefatigable Boston based P.I. who, since 1973’s The Godwulf Manuscript, has been wittily cleaning up Boston’s streets one asshole at a time.  Parker, as you may know, died on January 18th, 2010 at 77, and I…

  • Post #9: You Should Be Reading More John Fowles

    I first discovered John Fowles via his marvelous and twisted novel of obsession and sexual gamesmanship The Magus.  It scrambled my brain.  Freaked me out.  Turned me on.  It’s a wild ride.  But as good as The Magus is, Fowles’s first novel, The Collector, might be even better.  I read it recently…

  • Post #8: Abbey Road & Risotto

    There are only a handful of moments in recorded musical history as near to an audio orgasm (“eargasm,” if you’re an Outkast fan) as those few unbearable seconds when “Polythene Pam” swells and swells and finally bursts into “She Came Into The Bathroom Window” on The Beatles Abbey Road, the…

  • Post #7: National Novel Writing Month

    I’m considering trying out National Novel Writing Month in November.  The goal is to produce 50,000 words in a month.  Only about 15% of those who try finish.  I’m excited about it, but for reasons I can’t quite articulate, though they’ve already had me called a snob once (and counting),…

  • Post #6: Revision and the Clock

    A writing teacher once told me that you know a piece is done when you can’t stand to look at it anymore.  For a long time, I thought that was about the best writing advice I’d ever heard; it distilled a lot of my own beliefs about revision to a…

  • Post #5: People Done Crazier Things For Love, Ain’t They?

    Is the title of a story I wrote which is featured in the current issue of Brilliant Corners (Vol 15, No. 2–summer, 2011).  I’m honored to have been in this one.  With a small, dedicated staff and an editorial board featuring such lightweights as, you know, Gary Giddins and Philip…

  • Post #4: Under Five Hundred Words on an Album That Changed my Life, Part 1

    Kind of Blue (1959, Columbia Records)   Freshman year in college I auditioned and was cast in (I didn’t have any lines, though) a student written and directed play called “A Summer in Delaware” that was very cool and totally weird.   It was eighteen minutes and thirteen seconds long, timed…

  • Post #3: Flash This

    As a novelist (mostly), I come to short stories a bit cautious, a bit weary.  After a few years of attempts, I’m warming up to them.  Which means that I come to flash fiction somewhere between mildly perplexed and scared shitless.  The form, though, is a good counterweight to my…