Pay Attention: Simplifying the Writing
Life can often be difficult, but writing doesn’t have to be. Take for instance the recent news that my wife Cathy has breast cancer. We’re in the early stages now of a challenge we didn’t choose, but one we’re determined to overcome. It’s the most difficult thing either of us has had to face. It’s…
Read MoreWater, Ash, the Ticking of a Clock: Using Concrete Images
In 2003, I published a book, Turning Bones, as part of the American Lives series at Nebraska Press. The book was a hybrid of nonfiction and fiction. I took what I knew about the paternal side of my family and used the facts to imagine lives for ancestors I never knew. In one section of…
Read MoreAn Open Letter to My MFA Students
Last night, we celebrated another MFA graduating class at The Ohio State University. I feel compelled, then, to rerun this post from twelve years ago. I used to have an office with a long window ledge where I kept photos of each of you, my thesis advisees, and me at Epilog, the end-of-the-year gala reading…
Read MoreWhere the Spirit Meets the Bone
I usually stream something when I’m on the treadmill, anything that will make the time pass quickly. Things I probably wouldn’t normally watch are perfect. Right now, I’m watching the old television program, Nashville. It’s basically a nighttime soap opera with some fairly good country music. A lot of twist and turns in a plot…
Read MoreShining a Light: One Writing Teacher’s Observations
Last Sunday, for the second consecutive year, Cathy and I attended our local high school’s spring musical. The production was excellent, but what struck me most, as it did last year, was how I got a little teary-eyed at the curtain call because I was thinking about what it must be like for parents to…
Read MoreMFA Thesis Defense Season
We’re in the middle of MFA thesis defenses now, so it seems like an opportune time to re-run this post from six years ago. It’s MFA thesis defense season here at Ohio State, which always reminds me of my own MFA experience at the University of Arkansas. So much of my education as a…
Read MoreIn Favor of Anger
Cathy and I were on our way home from the grocery store yesterday, when we noticed a man who lives in our neighborhood on his motorcycle. He was obviously having trouble with the bike. It was sputtering and stalling, and he was delaying the traffic behind him. We were at a red light, waiting to…
Read MoreBeyond the Headlines: Novels Based on True Stories
I’m still working on the first draft of this new novel. It’s based on a true story, and that’s given me the main plot points of the narrative. There’s so much to learn, though, about the characters and what might or might not be possible for them. One of the things I like most about…
Read MoreOur House
Nine years ago today, Cathy and I closed on our house. It was a new start for us. We’d found our way back to each other after thirty-four years apart. We’d both left unhappy marriages and had fallen in love all over again. Over the past nine years, this house—our house—has been filled with so…
Read MoreA Writer’s Spring Miscellany
The daffodils and the forsythia are in bloom. Here, in central Ohio, the temperature is supposed to reach seventy-five degrees. Don’t get too comfortable, though; a storm is coming. Tomorrow the high will be forty-seven, and Tuesday, we’ll only reach twenty-seven. So it is in March here in the Midwest as we yo-yo our way…
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