Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
This last week I participated in an online short story course. One Story's Write a Short Story with Hannah Tinti was an engaging, entertaining, but most of all practically useful one-week course, though which we explored a basic structure for short story writing. This was the first class I've done with One Story, and I... Continue Reading →
In 1966, the Dominican writer Jean Rhys published her most celebrated work, the novella Wide Sargasso Sea. It marked her return to the literary scene after a near twenty-year's gap, and it inspired a large body of scholarship and study. Wide Sargasso Sea took as its focus the character of Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë's... Continue Reading →
This week's post forms part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop, in which writers at all stages of their careers come together to share knowledge. It's a good group. Check out the posts of others here. In this second week of school this year, our student creative writing group commenced. Two budding student leaders... Continue Reading →
The school year has begun, and with most students arrived and out of quarantine, things feel more normal than they have in months. I've taken on two second-year Language & Literature courses from a colleague, and in a lesson reviewing the myriad ways we might analyze texts, one lovely pair of words emerged that will... Continue Reading →
This week's post is part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop. Check out posts by other writers about writing craft and industry. It is a good community and a good resource. #AuthorToolboxBlogHop The longer I poke at things I long believed about writing, the more they crumble like a log long on the fire.... Continue Reading →
This post is third in a series about figurative language. The first post in the series discussed simile, metaphor, and symbolism. Last week, we explored personification and zoomorphism. Today, we will drive on to the realm of some lesser-known cousins, synecdoche and metonymy. Synecdoche A subset of metaphor, synecdoche refers to a part of an... Continue Reading →
The menagerie of figurative language is large, unruly, a great joy to study. Last week, we explored its three most essential forms: simile, metaphor, and symbolism. Today, we reach forward to two more specific species: personification and zoomorphism. Personification Personification refers to any simile, metaphor, or symbol that lends human qualities to something nonhuman. In... Continue Reading →
This post is part two of two in a series on worldbuilding. To read part one, click here. Last week, we explored how to plan and develop a speculative world, how we must situate ourselves along a continuum between the real and the absurd, how we can tie into existing cultural concepts while still making... Continue Reading →
A few years ago I found myself in a one-day writing workshop, examining all fiction in terms of three elements: character, conflict, and description. The idea that every sentence we write is primarily serving one of these functions is perhaps reductive, but it can also help us tease out why a passage is not working,... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 