During a moment of discouragement this morning—others writers have better focus than me, more time to read great literature, no three-year-old pulling love and attention away from the page—I flashed back to college, to what I now realize is a seminal moment in my development as a writer. The world looked bleak (Was it my …
I’m a great proponent of the triage method of revising: Take care of the big problems first and gradually work your way down to the details of language. This is a great policy—in the abstract. If there’s such a thing as a time-saver, prioritizing is it. And generally writers DO pay more attention to word …
The more I revise and the more I help new writers learn to revise, the more I’m convinced that good revision, like any good writing, is essentially play. Robin Marantz Henig’s recent article in the New York Times , “Taking Play Seriously,” looks at recent scientific studies that ask, What is play’s role in …
I’m a tender-hearted gardener. When last year’s cherry tomatoes reseed themselves, I don’t have the heart to pull them out. And so I end up with an abundance of late-ripening cherry tomatoes. What to do? Make tomato sauce. But cherry tomatoes are a hassle to peal, even after blanching, so I choose the lazy route, …
Here’s an observation to chew on: A few times in my career as a writing instructor, I’ve coached retired therapists in writing their memoirs. These are people who have worked with their personal stories over decades; they’ve had extensive experience in therapy and have continued to explore their stories through supervision groups and continuing education. …
Most prose writers at some point get overwhelmed by the scope of their material. Except for those deliberately writing short, stand-alone pieces, writers usually face projects whose scope or subject matter is larger than most human beings can fathom. The memories are too complex, the emotions too fearsome, the pages too many, the themes too …
During my first years of serious writing, I labored under the conceit that I was writing a book. The thought was bracing; it motivated me to climb out of bed at 5:30 so I’d have a half-hour of solitary creativity before I had to face a classroom of seventh graders. Only as I entered my …