“Would you like to see your mother one more time?” asked the huge blonde woman with a Norwegian last name, one of a set of triplets who had taken over the funeral home from their father in Scottsdale, Arizona. For one amazing moment, I thought this might actually be possible. I thought I might be… Continue reading In medias res
Tag: Writing Advice
And have you read… Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants?
On Elena Georgiou’s rapturous rhapsody… Q: What was the impetus for this book? The impetus of the book was to try to document working-class immigrant voices. I am the daughter of immigrants who then also immigrated. In my experience, working-class immigrants, on the whole, don’t have much time for putting their lives on paper, and… Continue reading And have you read… Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants?
A Shameless Act of Self-Promotion
By Jon Ulrich This September will see the release of my first book, Winter in the Wilderness. It’s been a long time coming. Success in writing, I’ve found, takes three things: persistence, luck, and persistence. I feel like I’ve won the lottery. In a way, I have. Not many people know this about me, but… Continue reading A Shameless Act of Self-Promotion
To Literature
She’d been feeling sad all week and she said it was because of a conflict with her lover or place of employ or caused by reading too many vacuous comments in the newspaper and the proud ignorance and misanthropy of the readers got her down. Or its cause was the news video she watched of… Continue reading To Literature
In the Middle of Things
About two thousand years ago the Roman poet Horace was writing a long critical paper in verse that he titled the Ars Poetica. One of the questions he asked in the Ars Poetica was: What’s the best place to start a story? The obvious place, of course, is the beginning and this is what Horace… Continue reading In the Middle of Things
On Writing About Trauma
On writing about trauma: being split, being divided… “I am torn in two but I will conquer myself. I will dig up the pride. I will take scissors and cut out the beggar.” Anne Sexton Turning back to face trauma in our own history and writing about it can be an emotionally tiring task. I… Continue reading On Writing About Trauma
On Collaboration
Collaboration: Two writers in the ‘Bad Art Room’ “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” – Elie Wiesel Introduction Collaboration among writers is important… Continue reading On Collaboration
New story. News story.
New story. News. Story. I have always followed the news. My earliest memories are of backseats, couches, cheap restaurants and taxi cabs in other countries where my mother or father would ask: can you turn it up please? The news. Can you turn it up? So they could hear better, so they could hear right.… Continue reading New story. News story.
Secret Writing and the Blank Page
by Isla McKetta I was working on a project. I really was. After publishing my thesis and a book on writing last year, I finally had time to dedicate to new work. And I was going to get to it in earnest just as soon as the post-publication blues passed. Whenever that was. We’ve all been… Continue reading Secret Writing and the Blank Page
And have you read… The Child Eater?
Rachel Pollack’s new book is an adult fairy tale! She answered a few questions for The Writer: 1) What was the inspiration for THE CHILD EATER? THE CHILD EATER began as the two final stories in a collection of adult fairy tales, The Tarot Of Perfection, that I’d written some years before. Actually, three of… Continue reading And have you read… The Child Eater?
How to Write a Sentence
How to lie down forever in a sentence, so that the sky above you breaks off into black and gold pieces. The sky falls down to the ground where you lay: posed, supine, and rained upon. Lie down inside a sentence, then. It hurt me to write sentences at first. The activity of recursion, fundamental… Continue reading How to Write a Sentence
In Some Darker Place
By Liz Latty “Only when you are lost can love find itself in you without losing its way.” -Hélène Cixous When I was a small girl, my mother taught me how to make a bed. She taught me how to stretch the fitted sheet that often didn’t quite fit the mattress by beginning at one… Continue reading In Some Darker Place
“Spotty-Handed Villainesses” Revisited
“[F]emale bad characters can…act as keys to doors we need to open, and as mirrors in which we can see more than just a pretty face. They can be explorations of moral freedom — because everyone’s choices are limited, and women’s choices have been more limited than men’s, but that doesn’t mean women can’t make… Continue reading “Spotty-Handed Villainesses” Revisited
On Writing and Vincent Van Gogh
By Tyler Whidden 1.) Write every day. Every goddamn day. What many don’t remember (or even knew to begin with) is that Vincent Van Gogh produced most of his body of work – over 2,000 pieces of art – in the last ten years of his life, and most of those were done in… Continue reading On Writing and Vincent Van Gogh
Amelia Earhart Didn’t Crash!
…and other thoughts on Making IT On graduation morning in July of 2011, a Goddard College advisor asked me how I felt about my post-Goddard future. There wasn’t a feeling. Just an image. A few weeks prior to graduation I had seen the Amelia Earhart biopic, starring Hilary Swank, and the final scene aptly depicted… Continue reading Amelia Earhart Didn’t Crash!
How I Picked Up a Spade and Became a Writer
by Kimberly Mayer The year was 2000. The end of the second millennium, the beginning of the third. A recent transplant from Philadelphia to Seattle, one of the first things I did in my new land was enroll in The Master Gardener Program. King County is where the international program originated in 1973, and to… Continue reading How I Picked Up a Spade and Became a Writer
How to Rewrite
A few weeks ago, a student wrote and asked me why I had given him an A- instead of an A as a final grade. This wasn’t at Goddard, obviously. I also teach television at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, which is far from our program and not just because of the letter grades, urban… Continue reading How to Rewrite
The X-men and Women in Us All
JC Sevcik on the writer in the world, the hero in us all… All my life, I’ve been a loner. As far back as I can remember, I’ve felt like an outcast. I did not have what anyone could possibly mistake for a happy childhood, but I always had stories. My father died when I… Continue reading The X-men and Women in Us All
Rejection Makes You Stronger
Minneapolis AWP — Check! I write this sitting cross-legged on the nubby zebra-print carpet of Seattle’s SeaTac airport. A friend dropped me off an hour early and I couldn’t be happier with the extra time to just chill. At the risk of sounding cheerleader-ish, what I want to say to all the beautiful passersby is… Continue reading Rejection Makes You Stronger
Rock The Casbah (Redux)
First: Take a large breath. Do you know that moment when you are in your Bootcamp exercise class, trying not to look totally decrepit as you struggle to find the right form when the trainer commands that you do endless burpees and then the music changes to The Clash’s “Rock The Casbah,” but it isn’t… Continue reading Rock The Casbah (Redux)