Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
In my first few years of teaching English, when people asked why I had chosen this career, I liked to say that I had chosen it because they paid me to talk about love. This was horribly simplified, delightfully whimsical, and ultimately self-indulgent, I can see now, but it is not entirely untrue. The language... Continue Reading →
My sister is, as far as I can tell, a financial genius. I might, with a knowing air, explain what "bonds" are to a class when teaching The Great Gatsby, but in a conversation with my sister, I realize quickly that I speak really with the self-contentment of naiveté. I might know my "bull" and... Continue Reading →
When the tide recedes, great shards of frozen fjord shatter against the shore. The ocean leaves them there as it pulls back from the land, and they pile up in a jagged ruin that stretches all around the bay at Flekkefjord. When the sun is blazing and the tide is moving at its fastest, you... Continue Reading →
I notice a fixation when I write on, let's call it, "textbook plausibility." It's always fiction, but I take great pains to make things possible. This could really happen, I hope the reader feels. Although we both know it never did. I'm currently working on a new story that I'm envisioning in a very specific... Continue Reading →
When we write, if we tape our feelings down to the page, if we do it with any thoroughness and honesty, they become rapidly an artifact. Later, we return to them like reading history. Those were the things in my mind that day. We can see the way seas of our thoughts change, and yet... Continue Reading →
In the story I have been drafting these last weeks, I've hit up against real edges in my knowledge. I have dived on into research, poring over academic articles, newspapers, and of course Wikipedia. I have taken awful volumes down of notes. I have learned much, and I've asked questions. I am generally not a... Continue Reading →
I return today to a question that has arisen frequently on this blog, that nagging issue in fiction I've not yet been satisfied with my own answers to, that I feel like this week I've stumbled haphazard into a new idea about--today, let's circle back to that question of conflict. When I taught high school... Continue Reading →
Last week, I began reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, a brilliant tour of Thatcher-era upperclass London, narrated in close third-person focus on unabashed gay hedonist Nick Guest. Although the window into Nick's world is undoubtedly fascinating, it is Hollinghurst's writing that I have been most entranced by. And that's what I'd like to... Continue Reading →
In Twitter's #WritingCommunity, the discussion of plotting and pantsing our stories is a common thread. Plotting, the careful outlining of a story before writing, and pantsing, the seat-of-our-pants, unplanned, accepting-what-comes creation of a story, each draws a crowd of strong adherents. Out foraging for mushrooms this week, we came across this beautiful chanterelle, late for... Continue Reading →
This post is part of the monthly #AuthorToolboxBlogHop. Read more great posts about writing here! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. The Great Gatsby, Chapter 5 I'm teaching The Great Gatsby this term,... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 