I’ve read two books recently that are knocking over some of the great pillars of craft supporting my writing practice. I’m both disconcerted and thrilled. First, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping. Matthew Salesses, a Korean American novelist, explores how culturally bound our contemporary literary standards are, which is why they […]
The writer’s life is anything but glamorous—mostly staring out the window, then crossing out what I’ve just written. Nonetheless, readings and author interviews are inevitably peppered with process questions: Do you write by hand or on the computer? How much do you write every day? How long did this book take you? The nitty-gritty aspects
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After a year of drafting my first young adult novel, I ran it past my trusty writing group (of twenty-five years!) and was unsurprised at their critique: The plot doesn’t yet spring from the desires of my characters. “What’s at stake for them?” my colleagues asked. “What are their burning passions? What obstacles do they face?
For years I’ve practiced strange medicine, resting my ear on the body of whatever story I happen to be writing. Is it alive? If so, what does it want to become? Even though we play a part in generating them, stories have heartbeats all their own. Once the draft is out, I listen beyond my
I began my work day driving two nervous middle schoolers to the teachers’ picket line to march and cheer. A limit to class sizes, more mental health workers, a livable wage for teachers’ aids—their demands are so basic, so humble, and the needs of the kids they serve so immense I find myself ripped wide with
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“You’re really enjoying writing these days,” a friend recently said. She was mirroring back to me my enthusiasm for my current project, a middle grade novel sprinkled with fantasy that occupies my mornings and then travels with me into the rest of my day like an invisible jungle gym for the heart. I desperately want
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At the close of the year I like to pay tribute to those books that have moved me, molded me, transported me, and made me laugh. After all, books usher me into sleep each night and ground me each morning; they are my abiding, faithful companions. Isn’t it amazing that we can sink into another
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Through November and December, each night’s darkness clamps a degree tighter. Much as my rational brain knows I have a critical role to play in creation, I can’t explain my way out of despair. I am nothing. I am dust, a wisp of Elizabeth, here then gone. How can I carry on?
Why does this memory return today? This question is endlessly fruitful for those of us who seek the meaning buried in experience. I ask it whenever a memory won’t let me go. My father died in July, and this simple meal on a park bench conjures completely all he meant to me: Our mutual effort to begin again.
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grounded in “the root of our being, securely held in the Absolute Being.” It is pragmatic because the belief then creates our reality.
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