Bad Parental Advice for Future Writers
When I was a boy on our farm in southeastern Illinois, my parents had a telephone that was on a party line, which meant that if a small boy chose, as this one did, to pick up the phone from time to time, he might be able to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. My grandmother…
Read MoreCompression and Expansion in the Short Story
I heard Hilma Wolitzer say once that writing a novel was easy; you just brought in all the family. Her point was that the form of the novel invites a larger world than that of the short story. The novel makes room for a large cast of characters and events as well as a broad…
Read MoreAnother School Year: Fail Better
Autumn Semester classes get underway this week at Ohio State University, and as they do, I’ll enter my thirty-sixth year of teaching. I know I’ve written about this before, but two stories bear repeating. My mother taught elementary school for thirty-eight years. She found plenty to keep her busy in her retirement. She helped my…
Read MoreLet the Details Do the Work
I’ve just returned from a week at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, where I taught a workshop focusing on the novel. Six novelists sat in a room with me for two hours and fifteen minutes each day, and together we workshopped excerpts from their novels in progress. We also used The…
Read MoreTo Form a Community of Writers
I’m off to teach at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Workshop. If you’re ever in the market for a summer writers’ conference, I highly recommend this one. It’s all about the craft! No agents, no editors, and none of that toxic atmosphere of “who’s made it, and what do I have to…
Read MoreWriting from Moments of Dislocation
Last week, I made a post about the role dislocation may play in the creative process. More specifically, I invited you to think about the moments in your own lives when you felt like an outsider. I also invited you to think about narrative as a response to these moments of dislocation. How do these…
Read MoreDislocation and the Birth of a Writer
I imagine that most of us, given our druthers, would choose to live an orderly, measured life, but, of course, we know that isn’t possible. Something always goes wrong, either a small bump, or a life-altering event. I’ve come to think that such changes are necessary to the writer. Some sort of dislocation occurs, and…
Read MoreBravery and Empathy
On Friday evening, my wife and I had the privilege of attending the capstone event for the Young Writers Workshop that we have at Ohio State University each summer. I believe it’s been about nine summers now. I remember closing the deal with our generous donor when I was directing the creative writing program back…
Read MoreOne Way to Shape a Narrative
Here we are on the other side of the Fourth of July. We’re in the heart of summer now, but I can feel its end and the coming of the crisp days of fall and then the biting winds of winter within the hot, sunny days that will still be ours for some time. Book-length…
Read MoreBringing the Periphery into Focus in Memoir
Last week, I posted an old photo on Facebook, a picture of me when I was 14 or 15. It was a Polaroid shot that my friend Doug took. In the photo, I’m sitting beneath a tree in my backyard holding my cat, Clyde. At first glance, this is a picture that makes me chuckle…
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