Tag: Writing Advice

My Mom Died and All I Got Was a Wet T-Shirt

My mom died three years ago and long before then, I knew I’d be writing about how it would all go down. Somehow, so did she. I was barely a teen, when after a particularly disturbing episode in our family’s constant chaos, my mother jerked my elbow towards her oversized chest and through her teeth spat, “Don’t you EVER write about this!!”

Alchemy of the Word

You asked for them: Those moving, inspiring, thought-provoking keynote and graduation lectures that you couldn’t stop thinking about.  At the residencies for the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing program, “Can I get a copy of that?” is an even more common refrain than “Trust the process!” And now, they can be yours. Goddard College is… Continue reading Alchemy of the Word

Lust & Fun

Goddard College MFAW alum John Schmidtke:

“Okay,” I said. “But just in case, what’s the residency’s theme?”

“Lust and fun,” Elena said. 

My foot came off the gas a bit.

“Lust and fun?”  I asked.

 

“Yes,” Elena said.

Let me pause right here to confess that while I attended Goddard, lust took over my life.

I cheated on my wife Mary almost every night for two years.

My Smarter Wiser Super-Sexy Personal Echo

Though the newest version of the Echo is decent, you can get a better response to life if you use your own voice—i.e. the Personal Echo. The Personal Echo is in high demand because it offers the gift of someone else controlling your life, but doing it in a way that feels as if you are talking to yourself. And truly, what writer wouldn’t want that?

On Language, On Sophisticated Style

I am an unabashed Language Freak. Word Freak. Sentence Freak. Grammar and Punctuation Freak. I am deeply in love with what William Golding called “that massive instrument” the English language. For me putting words down on paper is like playing a finely tuned piano. No wrong notes, please! My instrument is too precious to misuse.

Embracing the Personal

“It all just feels so… personal.”

N is a new student of mine, one who has worked in the theater industry for years, but never written a play before.  He called me before our first week of class, and I could tell he was feeling intimidated by the process of playwriting.  We discussed some exercises he could do and some of his favorite plays and playwrights, and I think I assuaged the majority of his concerns.  His one lingering reservation:

“It’s just so personal.”

Amtrak Writer’s Residency: Rail Tale

I’m writing to you today from the Amtrak quiet car, on a southbound train somewhere in New Jersey. Although the Amtrak Writer’s Residency Program is “currently evaluating the future of the program and do not have a timeline for when the next submission process will launch,” you can still pay out of pocket for a DIY Amtrak residency. That’s what I’ve been doing in 2017, now that my full-time teaching job is in Virginia and my fiancé is a theater director in New York.

On Deadline and On Holiday

On deadline and on holiday?  How is a writer to cope?

Thanksgiving is here and my desk, which is usually covered with story notes and research books is now also covered with cookbooks and shopping lists.  My laptop windows range from comic book scripts to “how to cook a turkey in 45 minutes” articles.  Needless to say, it is a confusing time for a writer.  When you are on deadline and on holiday, how is a writer to cope?

The Fries Test: On Disability Representation

Twenty years ago, I edited Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out, the first commercially published multi-genre anthology of writers with disabilities writing about disability. The anthology was published by Plume. In the introduction, I wrote: “Throughout history, people with disabilities have been stared out. Now, here in these pages — in literature of inventive form, at times harrowingly funny, at times provocatively wise — writers with disabilities affirm our lives by putting the world on notice that we are staring back.”

Unpacking the Passed

A college professor of mine, the indomitable Beth McCoy at Geneseo, liked to use the word “unpack.”

“Unpack that statement for us,” she’d say in class, meaning, Give us the meat. Tell us how you got there, what it means.