Blogs.com has been featuring guest bloggers offering their favorites sites in their given field—from Wired’s Chris Anderson to Ning and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen to Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Four-Hour Workweek’s Timothy Ferriss. Good crowd. When the site’s editors asked SMITH for our own must reads, we happily offered “SMITH Mag’s Top 10 [...]

It’s no secret that writing thoughtful, emotionally-affecting fiction comes from the writer’s ability to draw on real life experiences and turn them into something great. Whether these experiences actually happened, or are anecdotes that were told to the writer by friends or strangers, the details and events that eventually make their way into the story must [...]

We’ve all experienced it before. Somebody makes a particularly cutting remark and you are briefly presented with the perfect opportunity to burn them right back. That is, if you are able think quickly enough. Sadly though, the perfect burn usually doesn’t come to you until later, on your way home that night or walking down the stairs, [...]

Imagine dozens of writers gathered to post nonfiction, memoir, rants, poetry, criticism, thoughtful analysis, photographs, and true stories in any form on one big, raw, no holds barred website that’s part blog, part soapbox—or as Kip Tobin puts it, sboxlog (I’m going to try to work that into conversations). The site’s called TheNervousBreakdown, and its [...]

“They don’t know you, and it doesn’t matter. They say it anyway, writing on the city itself, because the message is important.”
In the spirit of six-word memoirs, the same less-is-more approach to storytelling can be seen in the urban message graffiti showcased at Written On The City. WOTC’s philosophy is simple and scrawled across their [...]

The six-word memoir might be the “American haiku,” but lovelorn poets and purists can show their true-to-form 5/7/5 skills over at Heartbreak Haiku, a collective story project run by NYU grad student Zanna Marsh. “Your best pals are happy to listen to your rambling, romantic sob stories once, maybe twice. But don’t be tempted to [...]