It’s hard to throw a stick in a writing class without hitting someone who’s flummoxed about voice. What is voice, anyway? How do I know if I have one? What if I don’t, and I’ve spent all this time/energy/angst on this writing craft for nothing? I think the question of voice … [Read more...]

My favorite Dickens work has always been A Christmas Carol. I fell in love with it long before I read any of the novels, when Walter C. Scott appeared on my parents’ black and white TV in all his scruffy, miserable glory. Despite the fact that I had been banned from anything … [Read more...]

This’ll be a brief one tonight, as my sixteen-year-old son is trying to convince my husband that we need to install solar panels unless we’d rather just be complicit in letting the world to come to a screeching halt in fifteen years; my daughter looks like she swallowed an aging … [Read more...]

Isn’t it odd that we great the new year with resolutions? Faced with the possibility and opportunity of renewal, we meet it with an already hatched plan? And not just any plan; usually one spawned from a Grinch-like session of hyperfocusing on where you fall short and vowing to … [Read more...]

  Let’s face it. Even the most thoughtful criticism is painful, whether the feeling is of being mildly stung or outright gutted. I don’t care how evolved or accomplished you are or that you have the emotional skin of a reptile; no one likes to hear that their work … [Read more...]

For the past eight weeks, I’ve been teaching an incredible group of writers. And as much as I hope they’re learning something by listening so generously to me, I suspect I’m the one coming out ahead. Thanks to their questions during our last class, for instance, I found myself … [Read more...]

A writer’s life can be a lonely one. And yet, contrary to popular opinion, that’s not because we’re incurable hermits. Writing is, ultimately, an act of communication, a desire to go beyond a superficial awareness of the human experience and enter into challenging conversations … [Read more...]

    I have the privilege of teaching a fantastic group of writers this fall, and last night they reminded me of just how insidious our cultural ideas of what it means to be industrious can be. Within seconds of my asking them what industry looks like, they … [Read more...]

We’ve all been there. We’re deep in the throes of a project, happily plugging along when, seemingly out of nowhere, everything grinds to a halt. It’s brutal. Not least because it’s just as likely to happen for no apparent reason whatsoever. In my closet, there’s a collection … [Read more...]

There’s a saying in literature that a work is never done, it’s only abandoned. As reckless and mildly demoralizing as this is, I think it’s often true. There’s always a feeling that we could be doing more, or better. No matter how long or hard we’ve worked, there remains a … [Read more...]