In his blog Writing Fiction, author Crawford Killian tackles what he sees as the problem of autobiographical fiction: "If you're true to the events and people of your life, you're probably going to write poor fiction, because real life is messier and less organized than fiction. If you follow the requirements for good fiction, you're going to have to distort those real-life events and people... who were supposedly the inspiration for writing the novel in the first place." Click here to read the full entry.

Writing coaches always tell you to read other writers to unlock the secrets of their particular mojo. Author Marilyn Johnson found inspiration in an unlikely place: The obituary column. "Good obit writers can bring someone -- well, to life," she explains. "It's a demonstration of great writing and I was very interested in how they did it." She was so interested, in fact, she started writing obituaries herself -- and then wrote a book on the subject called The Dead Beat. We spoke to Marilyn about the obit genre:

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English has some peculiar ways of spelling words, but happily there is often a method to its madness. This month in the Lounge we explore, with the help of the Visual Thesaurus, some of the least among us, at least in so far as number of letters is concerned.  Continue reading...