It’s far too easy to dismiss prompts as throwaway exercises used only in writing classes for novices, but the truth is that prompts are the perfect antitoxin for short- and long-term writing ailments, most of which are symptoms of the larger disease of taking yourself and your … [Read more...]

I firmly believe that anyone who claims to have mastered plot is either misguided or misanthropic, fond of watching perfectly nice new writers squirm and agonize over generating plots, assuming that the difficulties they have represent a deficit in talent. But nothing could … [Read more...]

When I was still trying to fit into the academic mold and working toward developing a doctoral thesis in education, I was privately baffled that my interest in adult education met with so many blank stares. Adult education, if it was addressed at all, was largely considered to be … [Read more...]

For the first thirty years of my life, I didn’t really write. Even though I knew I was a writer from the time I learned how to read, my ideas about being a writer were so woefully misguided that I never really got anything off the ground. Sure, I was turning out tortured, … [Read more...]

Or, as my long-suffering, fact-loving, sixteen-year-old sophomore likes to say: Why, metaphor?! As in, Why are the adults in my life trying to shove poetry down my throat when they know I couldn’t care less, and what’s more, enjoy wearing my self-righteous disdain like a badge of … [Read more...]

              Show, don’t tell. Show, don’t tell. Show, don’t tell. Writers hear this advice so often, it can feel like it’s being generated by the Muse of Nagging, who smells like old soup and/or middle school … [Read more...]

Here’s what I’ve learned this week: mindfulness is all well and good, unless you’re 11, 14, or 16, and your amygdala is (age-appropriately) on the fritz. Don’t get me wrong: I love that my kids have even been introduced to the idea of mindfulness, especially since when I was … [Read more...]

Usually, when we talk about the challenges of writing, we focus exclusively on the challenges of working with words. And while I’d be the first to say that working with a medium that is both abstract and concrete (not to mention elusive and pervasive) cannot be understated, I … [Read more...]

Historically, I haven’t exactly been the paragon of patience when it comes to my writing. It doesn’t help that, like most of us, the lion’s share of written work I was producing was on deadline – first for school, then for work. But even now I’ve allowed my diplomas to gathering … [Read more...]

When I first started writing, I thought that happily-ever-after endings were taboo, the hallmark of less “serious” scribes and, literally, the easiest way out. I cut my teeth on poetry, after all, the sort of dark, dismal stuff that was so popular during the late 20th century and … [Read more...]