Let’s Make a Scene
When children misbehave in public, parents often tell them, “Don’t make a scene.” What an unfortunate reprimand for any child who one day might be a writer, particularly if we’re prose writers. We spend our days making scenes on the page. I want to get down to basics in this post; I want to illustrate…
Read MoreRound Characters
As some of you know, Cathy and I have two raised beds in a community garden. The garden is along a busy road and highly visible. This may explain, at least in part, why it’s tempting for someone to steal vegetables. No one has taken anything from our beds, perhaps because they’re at the rear…
Read MoreHope and Love: A Writer’s Choice
Each year, in August, I finish teaching a workshop at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Writers’ Conference and then turn my attention to a new school year at Ohio State University. For teachers and students, hope springs eternal in autumn. A new academic year; a new beginning. Writing is an act of faith and…
Read MoreAn August Assortment: One Writer’s Musings
Here we are in August, a time of transition. Summer is lumbering toward autumn like an old dog circling before finding a place to lie down and rest. Cooler days are ahead; we just don’t know exactly when they’ll arrive. These times of pause before transition are suspenseful in a way. Maybe we’re tired of…
Read MoreRevision by Indirection
Summers, when I was a teenager, my father made me work in our vegetable garden. I would have rather been doing anything else. Running a tiller, hoeing around plants, hilling potatoes—none of it was much fun. Instead, it was sweat and dirt and what seemed like endless trips up and down the rows. My father…
Read MoreThe Long Haul
Last week, while I was in my native southeastern Illinois, I ran at the high school track. One morning as I was running, a grounds person was mowing grass. I’d just finished my run and left the track for my stretches and cool-down, when the man on the mower stopped and asked me how far…
Read MoreNew Beginnings
By the time she reads this, she’ll be married, and I will have had the honor of walking her down the aisle and dancing the father/daughter dance with her. Her husband, as far as I can tell, is a good man, a kind and decent man, exactly the sort of man any parents would wish…
Read MoreFinding the What Via the Why
Many years ago, I wrote the title story of my first collection, The Least You Need to Know. I remember when the narrative reached a point of resolution, and I sat there knowing something was still missing. I realized I didn’t know why my narrator was telling this particular story. That’s when I heard him…
Read MoreMaking the Small into Something Large
One of my favorite short stories is “Killings” by Andre Dubus. The major event of the story, the revenge killing of a man who has murdered the main character’s son, is large, but within the narrative that moves to this climax, there are smaller, quieter moments that are equally significant. One such moment occurs in…
Read MoreRestarting the Writing Process after Time Away
Cathy and I are back home after a splendid week away on the shore of Lake Erie, and now, like some of you, perhaps, I’m faced with getting back to work on an unfinished manuscript that I left alone while I was gone. “You don’t get good by wishing to be,” the poet, Stephen Dunn,…
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