The books lead is about 750words.com and typetrigger.com, which are two locally produced websites that exist to help you shake off writer's block. 750words is more private, whereas Typetrigger provides an anonymous social outlet (if that makes sense) for your writing.
And then, along the same lines, I review a new novel by under-appreciated British novelist Scarlett Thomas called Our Tragic Universe. It's about a (successful) hack writer named Meg Carpenter who teaches classes about storytelling to students. Of course, the one thing Meg can't do is finish her literary novel, because genre and melodrama keeps creeping in at the edges. Thomas never gets the attention she deserves in America, and Tragic is a good introduction to her work (follow it up with PopCo and Going Out.)
And in Constant Reader, I review the Bushwick Book Club, an anthologized evening at the Can Can in which songwriters responded to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.
All that and more in this week's books section.
