Johan Smits

The latest issue of Tint Journal, the magazine for English as a Second Language (ESL) writers, just launched today! Find all 24 texts online and for free at tintjournal.com. We hope you enjoy reading this new issue and find something that resonates with you!

Artwork: Vanesa Erjavec

Practical

"It’s said half of healing happens in your head — placebo effects and all that — but in my case there’s little room for doubt; facts are facts and linoleum is linoleum."

tintjournal.com/short-story/...

The unconscious process that leads to creativity: how ‘incubation’ works The creativity process has been divided into four phases – including one where you need to let your unconscious do the work

www.theguardian.com/wellness/202...

My favourite line in The Coen Brothers' "Hail, Caesar!" by Josh Brolin's character - movie production executive Eddie Mannix - in the confession box to a priest: "I struck a movie star in anger."
He gets away with five Hail Marys.

Thank you for giving this the perfect home!

Thank you @bloodhoneylit.bsky.social for giving this the perfect home!

"But I don’t feel alone. I feel surrounded. There’s something life-affirming in sitting quietly amongst the dead. I get a calming sense of comfort. The Sicilians of the past look back at me from their portraits of eternity."

TINT NONFICTION // Bianca-Olivia Nita is a Romanian-born nonfiction writer and documentary critic based in The Netherlands. She is currently working on an essay collection. Read her essay "Fish, Water, Lemons, Sea" at tintjournal.com/essay/fish-w...

Art: "Before the Deep Sleep" by Mirja Paljakka

This story made my day :-)

Carl Sagan. Photo by Susan S. Lang - 1978

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere." Carl Sagan

Silence

"Being able to play Frère Jacques on the recorder might earn you some popularity as your family’s circus monkey at weddings and christenings, but not help you get into a good university later on."

tintjournal.com/essay/silence

"...an artist doesn't really need a great deal of experience. One heartbreak can produce many novels. But you have to have a heart that can break."

Brian Morton, 'Starting Out in the Evening', upon which the 2007 film with the same name is based, starring Frank Langella.

The Fearsucker | Johan Smits "Something wraps your ankle in a tight grip. A sharp end presses into your lower back and threatens to pierce your skin. A claw? A sting? A beak?"

"Something wraps your ankle in a tight grip. A sharp end presses into your lower back and threatens to pierce your skin. A claw? A sting? A beak?"‪

Our Spring 2025 issue recently launched with a short story by @johansmits.bsky.social.

The Fearsucker | Johan Smits "Something wraps your ankle in a tight grip. A sharp end presses into your lower back and threatens to pierce your skin. A claw? A sting? A beak?"

"Defamiliarization: an artistic or literary technique that presents the common in unfamiliar ways; that which has been taken for granted is reenvisioned, made strange, to heighten a reader’s perception of the familiar." From The Gravity of the Thing.

thegravityofthething.com/the-fearsuck...

Fantastisch personage! De Duits-Oostenrijkse Daniel Kehlmann heeft enkele jaren terug met "Tyll" een geweldige roman geschreven gebaseerd op de avonturen van Tijl Uilenspiegel. Grappig, innemend en ontroerend. Sterk aanbevolen.

The woodcuts illustrating Alex Garland's The Coma, perfectly capture the novella's unsettling, dreamlike mood. Rereading this little pearl of a book, it strikes me as the perfect complement to Ishiguro's 500+ pages novel The Unconsoled. Two masters at work...

Very much love your style! It also reminds me of the work by the French "bandes dessinees" artist Marc-Antoine Mathieu, especially his series about Julius Corentin Acquefacques. Thank you for sharing!

Tommy - F(r)iction When Thomas first met Tommy he didn’t immediately recognise himself: Tommy was the spitting image of Thomas at age nine. But at forty-five, Thomas had largely forgotten what his little...

Tommy... Oh, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy...!
#SpeculativeFiction
frictionlit.org/tommy/

237. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro — Backlisted “A masterpiece I don’t fully understand—and don’t need to.”  This week’s book is The Unconsoled  by Kazuo Ishiguro, a bold, baffling, and darkly funny novel that has confounded and enchan...

Who needs hallucinogenics when you have Ishiguro's The Unconsoled? Still my all-time favourite...
www.backlisted.fm/episodes/237

Hard Times Call for Hard Measures Mrs. Leonova, who serves as a dehumanized bathroom implement for the wealthy, observes the impact on herself and the world around her when she begins to feel valued.

Because these are hard times...
bebarbar.com/2024/02/27/h...

Regime Change – Free Flash Fiction ****The first mayor of the village had no head, limbs, or body. It was just a pile of hair. The village was peaceful and prosperous during the pile of hair’s reign, so the mayor was considered judicio...

I particularly enjoyed this one: freeflashfiction.com/fiction/regi... #FlashFiction

The Question – Free Flash Fiction “Like stained glass,” she answered, “born out of sand – or in other words: potentially unstable but refined. Possesses a nature that’s both translucent and ambiguous. Likes to flirt with light, with s...

Warning - shameless self promotion! My latest flash fiction, "The Question": freeflashfiction.com/fiction/the-...
#FlashFiction

A Butterfly in a Jam Jar It occurs to me that even though I’m a writing fish who (a) swims in the goldfish bowl of the shortest forms of fiction and (b) likes to waffle on about the ins and outs of writing craft, I’ve never a...

A Butterfly in a Jam Jar open.substack.com/pub/prattlef...

Excellent piece on what is(n't) flash fiction! #FlashFiction

And here's one, non-native English author :-)
@johansmits.bsky.social