Straight from the Quill — notes from the writing workshops
Don't avert your eyes
Yesterday, one of my creative writing students popped by and told me she had finished writing an essay, but she wasn’t going to put it up on her brand new blog because it was too dark. She is a food writer, and writes essays so succulent, so delicious the words melt on your tongue. This…
Read MoreTell me what you want
Robert Olen Butler, in his book FROM WHERE YOU DREAM, says the one thing missing from almost every student manuscript he reads is a sense, in the beginning of the work, of what the main character yearns for. He says fiction is “the art form of human yearning” and that writers needs to place an…
Read MorePlaying in Inkwood
I was twenty, and it was somewhere round three o’clock in the morning. I sat at a battered desk in the corner of the bedroom in my basement apartment in Montreal. The floor was warped from one of the unending water leaks in the ancient plumbing and the desk wobbled. Charlie Mingus’s music played from…
Read MoreSHARPENING THE QUILL WORKSHOPS
I am thrilled to announce I’ve begun creative writing workshops in Princeton – last Saturday of every month! I invite you to join us. Although we’re just beginning. We are already a group of friendly, supportive writers — some just starting on the writer’s journey, others already well published. Fiction, memoir, poetry, flash fiction, creative…
Read MoreWhen you want to give up
There comes a time when every writer wants to give up, to crumple those pages into tight little balls and toss ’em in the basket, or better yet — burn ’em. In fact, when I’m teaching I often tell students this in the first class, so they won’t be blindsided when it happens to them.…
Read MoreThe God of Small Things
“Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.” – William Zinsser A friend of mine is taking a writing class with William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well. I was surprised when she told me several of her classmates quit the class when Zinsser gently insisted on talking about the process of writing,…
Read MoreWe don't do that here
Last week I was down in Trenton with an organization called People & Stories, a reading and discussion program that (according to their mission statement) “creates unique access to literature. Adults and young adults who have had limited opportunities to experience the power of literature work in small groups led by a trained coordinator. Participants…
Read MoreView from the mountaintop II – Spiritual journal
My last post was about the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly in Tennessee, where I went recently to lead a workshop on keeping a spiritual journal. In that post I talked about Monteagle and the people there. Today I’ll talk about the workshop itself. There’s a line in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous about a…
Read MoreFrom the mountain top
I recently went to Tennessee to teach a workshop on keeping spiritual journal at the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly on the mountain top near Sewanee (not to be confused with the river or the song of similar name). The Monteagle Sunday School Assembly entrance The church and gazebo on the mall Okay, I admit it,…
Read MoreTwelve Steps for Writers
Last week I wrote about how both people wishing to stay sober, and people wishing to be writers had more than one thing in common. I also said I’d give some thought as to what the 12-steps for Writers might look like. Here we go – please feel free to keep your sense of humor…
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