What nobody tells you as an artist is that every project starts at the beginning. Not just the blank page, the empty stage, but that you have to re-establish your credentials and your quality every time. You can coast on reputation a little, but it doesn’t last long if you don’t deliver ( Read more... )

I spent Sunday and Monday adapting my essay, Kalighat, into a five-minute story to tell at The Moth StorySLAM in Chicago last night ( Read more... )

I’m learning I need to go to bed earlier. Every morning I wake up feeling like there’s not enough sleep in the world.

DiscussionWe talk about last night’s faculty readings - how long is too long? I also noted that I didn’t like it when an author brought up their notebook or book, and leafed through it to find the next piece; dude, you knew you ( Read more... )

Discussion
We talked about Hope Edelman’s Strong Men and how the group of men was a character as a whole. How details show character. How Edelman left it open whether or not she was, in fact, an alcoholic, and how the line “It wasn’t bottom. Not yet.” implies that the bottom is coming, for either the author or her father ( Read more... )

In case anyone would like to follow along.

Nonfiction meets in a seminar room that feels straight out of Harry Potter - we're in a converted house called Sunset Cottage, in a room with walnut paneling and glass-fronted bookcases and a big square table that all 9 of us sit around.

IntroductionsThe teacher asked us to talk about our lives rather ( Read more... )

So I wrote this.

And got a great question from similiesslip:

I find your perspective very interesting. I may be taking this too far but I truly would like to understand... Do you feel you have the right to invent stories only about those of your own nationality?The following is also in the comments on that piece, but I'd love to hear from the flist (and ( Read more... )

Words on the page ( Read more... )

Sometimes you come to a place where the pages you keep skipping, the pages you don't want to write, the ones that make you a Bad Person go. You've skipped them for nearly two weeks, thinking, well, I'll come back to them, and then there it is, the place where they go, so perfectly, so correctly that you must write them now. So you do. And then you ( Read more... )

Coffee shop, this morning the music is good enough to keep my earbuds out, at least while I’m editing. It’s a No-Email-‘Til-You-Write Day. You talk to yourself in the second person when you’re trying to enforce discipline, self-discipline being easier when it’s external. It’s easier to check in with a writing buddy or sit down with a writing buddy ( Read more... )

everywordiwrite inquires in a comment:

How much time are you devoting a day to writing? Is that still including research? Right now, is writing your main career focus? How varied are the types of things you're writing about? Do you include editing time with writing time, or separately, or are you saving it for later?

Curiosity sparked by personal need to return ( Read more... )