I’ve just returned from teaching a novel workshop at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, and I want to share a writing exercise that I hope will help you know your characters better while also allowing your own vulnerability to take you to a deeper level of engagement with the material. The…

Something happened last week that I can’t tell you about without potentially embarrassing another writer. That’s something I try to never do. We’re all laboring in the vineyard of words. I respect anyone who faces the blank page. Suffice it to say that the thing that happened became a test of my belief that we…

Hot, dry days. Cicadas chirring. The corn stands tall with its tassels and silks. The soybean plants bush out, nearly knee-high or better. Pickers snap cantaloupes and watermelons from the vines. Peaches, peaches, peaches. Here in southeastern Illinois, these are the dog days, the moment of pause before we make the turn toward autumn. Life…

A good piece of fiction opens by putting together some sort of knot that will have to be untangled by the end of the narrative. This knot can be constructed from characters who are at cross-purposes, or from a problem that has to be solved, a journey undertaken, a visitor whose presence challenges the status…

This past week’s release of Harper Lee’s novel, Go Set a Watchman, has me thinking of the first time I was aware of To Kill a Mockingbird, not the book, but the film, which I saw with my aunt and grandmother at a drive-in theater when I was seven. I remember being completely engrossed with…

Is it just me, or has narrative fallen out of favor with a large number of creative nonfiction writers? While I admire the lyric, the experimental, and all the forms that we continue to create in this extremely elastic genre, I still encourage young writers not to be so quick to dismiss narrative because narrative…

Give me this day a focus of mind, a love of the word, a willingness to try to understand those who confound me, a patience with my own shortcomings, a forgiveness for every time I didn’t write as well as I might have, compassion from those I’ve hurt, tolerance for those who have offended me.…

  Painted in white letters on a lane of the high school track where I sometimes run or walk is the word, “Finish.” Each time I passed it on Father’s Day this year, I thought of how my own father made sure I understood the importance of completing what I started. I know I’ve told…