If you’ve ever heard me talk about my MFA program, you might have noticed I tend to speak in superlatives: It was one of the best decisions I ever made, I found some of my closest friends there, and I learned so much about my writing that I can hardly identify any major gaps-save one. The one significant (to me) lesson I hadn’t picked up during ( Read more... )

I have a distinct memory of typing my first story, a piece of fan fiction, on my uncle’s computer. I had written out by hand nine double-spaced pages, which was far more than my teacher asked for with that assignment. (The prompt? “Write a story.” You can imagine how much I, still loyal to structure and clear guidelines, gnashed my teeth over that ( Read more... )

Not long into the new semester and already I feel swamped by obligations. These are the first words in weeks I’ve written for me-and for you, though I use [sic] to think on the page, so I don’t really consider it as writing for others. Because I’ve been so swept up by school-related matters, I find my mind blank. Nothing to write about. So, in the ( Read more... )

I decided on this a few months ago, but it seems appropriate to share it now with everyone talking of resolutions and goals for the new year: I’m going to write a novel ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago, I finished a book that I was not terribly fond of. I hadn’t gotten very far in before I realized what a chore reading it was. Yet I pressed on, hopeful, eventually desperate, that the author would turn it around, that the next story would make me feel like my commitment would pay off. It never happened. As short as the book was, I ( Read more... )

In the winter of 2005 I came home one day to find that part of the roof over my room fell in, bringing with it the ice that had sat there over the previous few weeks. I reacted as you might expect. Few of my possessions were ruined in the collapse, thankfully, though there were some casualties. One of those was my copy of I, Robot with the Stephen ( Read more... )

Before this year, I didn’t take submitting for publication very seriously. I sent out two stories to be exact. Part of that was because I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of what kind of work other magazines published. I didn’t at the time think I had much in my inventory worth sending out. And I had fun just writing; I figured I had plenty of time ( Read more... )

The other day while waiting for the bus I saw a young girl start Cat Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. At that moment I felt an overwhelming ambivalence. On the one hand, I really wanted to talk to her about it-to ask her why she picked the book up, to ask if she knew there’d be five in the series, to say ( Read more... )

Last summer I embarked on a project: I’d read a story every day for the next year. I can no longer remember my rationale for this decision, but I can speculate. For one, I’d been reading a lot of novels and book-length nonfiction, so I certainly could have used some re-familiarizing with the short story. Also, I knew of many speculative fiction ( Read more... )

To the confusion of a few friends, I don’t write in my books. Mostly, that is. I make this distinction between books I’ve had to get-for classes, for teaching, for jobs-and those I’ve acquired gratis from generous friends or bought for no other reason than I wanted them. The latter I don’t write in. The former I do, though it took a significant act ( Read more... )