What Were They Thinking?
As fiction writers, we make decisions about how close we want the reader to be to our main characters’ thoughts. Sometimes the point of view is very distant as it is when we’re reporting our characters’ actions or their histories or describing their landscapes. Take, for example, the opening lines of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White…
Read MoreFollowing the Trouble to Its End
When I run on a treadmill at the Y on the weekends, the television in front of me is often showing a program, which I believe may be called Dr. Chris Pet Vet. It’s a show about pets in need of care for one reason or the other. The owners bring their pets to Dr.…
Read MoreA Teacher Who Took the Time
This week I re-watched the Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day, because I wanted to see my former teacher, Lucy Gabbard, the woman who had such an effect on me when I was first an undergraduate and then a graduate student at Eastern Illinois University. She’s billed as “Flat Tire Lady” in this film because she’s…
Read MoreCourage, Confidence, Curiosity: Writing the First Draft
My neighbor, Uwe, likes to walk. I mean, really walk. Five, seven, ten miles—it’s nothing for him, and he’s a little shy of 75 years old. Sometimes he’s on the treadmill next to mine at the local YMCA where I run five miles every other day, but I know he likes to get out on…
Read MoreBeing Good Stewards of Our Gifts: Advice for Writers and the Writing We Do
I just got back from Vermont yesterday, which explains the lateness of this weekly post. I was teaching at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference along with many of my favorite colleagues. (By the way, this conference, at least to my way of thinking, is one of the very best.) This morning,…
Read MoreTaming the Shaggy Beast: Letting Your Novel Write Itself
The laconic comedian, Stephen Wright, once said, “I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.” Now there’s a man determined to tame the shaggy beast, as Henry James called the novel form. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d prefer a few more practical strategies for getting the job done than…
Read More“Whatcha Doin’?”: Surviving a Writer’s Dry Season
I came back from teaching in the Miami of Ohio low-residency MFA program yesterday and found we’re still in the middle of a dry season here in Columbus. The lawns are brown and crunchy, and, truth be told, it depresses me to see them that way. Even those who are watering, or have irrigation systems,…
Read MoreTeaching and Revising
I’m leading a fiction workshop this week—a good warmup for another academic year about to begin—and it occurs to me that the way I approach the discussion about a manuscript may offer a useful scheme for those interested in strategies for revising a first draft. My custom is to first consider—and to invite my workshop…
Read MoreHot Enough?: Practicing Subtext in Dialogue
We’re having a heat wave. Temps in the mid-nineties. Heat indices well over a hundred. Cathy and I went out yesterday afternoon to do some shopping, and the volume of traffic was noticeably lower. The stores were a bit emptier. There was no waiting for a table at one of our favorite restaurants. If a…
Read MoreThe Variation in the Habitual: Creating Scenes
We’ve hit a stretch of hot, dry days here in central Ohio, each day like the one before it. The grass is brown, the trees are dropping their leaves, the sun blazes. I long for a variation in the pattern, something out of the ordinary, something to make me say, “Ah, here’s something different.” Such…
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