About
For TheNervousBreakdown I’ve written about adolescent misery, cherry season in Menerbes, a soft core porn audition, bigotry, heartbreak and goatees, Oktoberfest, problems of language, homelessness, depression, arguing neighbors, sympathy with homicidal maniacs, returning a robe, my father, my mother, the night sky in Kenya, kissing, my grandparents, abortion, Hemingway, time and semen.
-Alexander Maksik
What I love most about TNB is its genre-crossing. We have novelists, wannabe novelists, writers who are primarily interested in literary nonfiction, old school journalists, occasional poets, and a spoken word artist. We have doubters and the fervent, pats and re-pats and ex-pats, pop culture aficionados and a witness to the genocide tribunals for Rwanda, all writing their hearts out and playing around with the new techniques afforded by the Web: hyperlinking, usage of video, and a heavy hand with Photoshop. (Which we all acquired via entirely legal means. Ahem.)
If you take seasoned writers but force them to be spontaneous and to write about what impacts them today, you get the awesome, frenetic pace of TheNervousBreakdown. It’s not a just a great read, it’s a great documentation of our times.
-Susan Henderson, LitPark.com
Web log. Blog. Blahg. Photo log. Phlog. Phlag. Memoir. Blogoir. Jourlog. Journalistic log. Litlog. Oddlog. Everythinglog. Elog. Rant. Blrant. Soap box. Sboxlog. Emo-log. Ephemeralog. Torrent. Torrlog. Unstoppable. Unstlogg.
It’s a little bit of everything, everyday. never know what you’ll get. Could be an homage to a dead writer or other person of fame, a long lost aunt, an extant parent or a dead childhood pet. Could also be a French film review, a recounted experience (usually awful, though sometimes inspiring or resurrected from its normalcy) at home or abroad, a scene articulated in excruciating detail or a detail excruciatingly articulated. It’s also possible to find a verbal emotional catharsis, a mental earworm removed and digitally splayed across the screen, the occasional non-fiction poem, literary news updates from various events like natural disasters or public transport strikes. The only guideline that’s ever been given is that each post has two pictures and two hyper-links, and even that has probably been broken. TNB is comprised of so many little NBs, we no longer know how many there are. The modern world is our inspiration, muse and demise. We attempt to report as much of its jackassery as we can. Read on.
-Kip Tobin
I have been in a constant state of change since I was eighteen, and I love the fact the TNB allows me to document this change while others watch, which is amazing but also kind of scary. I feel best when things are amazing but also kind of scary.
-Doug Mulliken
Some of the contributors are street poets, some have published novels, some write for magazines, some for other Internet sites. Some post frequently, some monthly, some hardly at all. The one thing they have in common is that all of the stories they tell on this site are true.
TNBers are some of the wittiest assholes on the Web writing some of the most introspective photo-journalism out there. Just like good coffee, these true stories are bold, strong, and full of sweet shit.
TNB is louder than an atom bomb. But oh so much better than Armageddon. It’s salvation on speed dial. A phonic love fest twenty crows deep. A human color-by-numbers, connecting each and every writer to the world. A verbal sandbox where we can kick around ideas. So what if a little sand gets in our eyes sometimes. It only makes our vision sharper in the long run.
Nervous, broke or breaking and it’s down
The sound of splatter against the pale
edit better to rail: to rant to laud lament
Hope for stick hope for stick
Clack, rattle and rage, erase
The phrase control, controls
Naked we come
Naked we depart
And the words they never stop
-James Michael Blaine
Kerouac wrote On the Road on a 120-foot roll of paper. I see TNB as something similar—a continuous feed of people’s experiences from around the world: what they’re seeing, doing, reading, feeling. Just scroll down and it’s all there: life, the universe & everything… well, nearly everything.
-P.D. Smith
I think of the writing I do for TheNervousBreakdown as a kind of open notebook. It’s more spontaneous than my other work, less controlled. It’s also nice to be part of a gang—can we get satin jackets?
-Noria Jablonski
Here goes nothing.
-Brad Listi
If you combined the wit of a hundred satirists, the humor a hundred comedians, and the heart of a hundred voices you’d have an approximation of TheNervousBreakdown. We refuse to fit the mold and stay in the box. It’s what makes writing for the site so fun…well, that and the barrel of monkeys we all received as a welcoming gift…
-Meghan Hunt
TheNervousBreakdown is one of only three mediums that have stopped me from screeching from a window in nothing but a trench coat and military boots, bellowing wildly about passion and robots and avisodomy and Princess Diana and people with plugs for hands and rats with crooked spines taking over the city and all sorts of other dangerous subjects that can lead to the death penalty in certain parts of Eastern Asia. The only other saviors are music and vagina. Neither are always guaranteed, or utterly free of rules & regulations; and that’s what makes TNB a beautiful thing.
-Martyn Smith
TNB is the online literary equivalent of Lollapalooza, where recognizable names share the bill with indie writers. The audience is hot and whip smart and cheers heartily at all the right moments. Poetry one day, reportage the next, it’s a constant surprise. If you’re gonna wreck your brain by reading online, TNB offers minimal damage.
-Megan Leah Power
There are so many attractive writers for TNB, and I feel prettier being among them. I think we can all agree that looks are at the top of the list of things that matter, so even when my writing lacks depth and meaning, I know it’s possible that someone out there is masturbating to my photograph. That makes me feel good. TNB makes me feel good. It will make you feel good, too.
-Lenore Zion
TheNervousBreakdown is a collective of interesting, clever people who are brave enough to really write.
-Jessica Anya Blau
TNB is one of the few places on the Internet where I can write freely from my happy place, which holds more than a handful of Catholic hang-ups, bodily fluids, and somatic-inclined navel-gazing.
-Jen Burke
From casual observation, one may view the writers of TNB to be manic, over-worked, under-sexed, bi-pedal creatures. The problem with casual observation is, you’re wrong. So make like Jane Goodall and watch our cabal with fervent curiosity. You may find that we’re not bi-pedal after all.
-Kit Seningen
The Nervous Breakdown is a collection of damn good writers from all over the globe. It’s like a delicious egg-foo young plate at the Joyful House here in Vegas: Hot, wholesome, and stinky. Bring your mom (or your sister) to the party and I’ll goose her free of charge.
-Reno J. Romero
I met my husband on TNB. No, seriously.
