The Shapes of Things: Letting Content Determine Form
When I worked with my father on our farm, I often found myself frustrated with a task I couldn’t perform—a rusted nut that couldn’t be turned, a grease zerk that was hard to reach, a saw blade that kept catching. When I’d say I couldn’t do something, my father would say, “Can’t never did nothing.”…
Read MoreTaking the Temperature of Writers’ Conferences
I just returned from teaching at the West Virginia Writers’ Conference, so I’ve decided to rerun this old post. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the old thermometers, the ones that you had to keep under your tongue for four minutes, the ones you had to shake down with an expert snap of…
Read MoreAt the End
One of my readers recently posed a question about loose ends in a book-length narrative and how to know what needs to be resolved and what can be left slightly open. The question also included an inquiry into the effectiveness of epilogues. A book-length narrative asks us to invest in the sweep of the main…
Read MoreThis Place of Dirt and Dust
The peonies are in bloom. Each year, in time for Memorial Day, these fragrant flowers make their showy appearance. When I was a child, my mother made bouquets. She put a handful of gravel in the bottom of a coffee can wrapped in aluminum foil. She added the cut peonies and maybe a few irises…
Read MoreThe Shared Experience: Tips for Reading from Your Work
My latest guilty pleasure is watching people on YouTube react to their first time hearing a song. I can’t quite figure out why I love doing this so much, but I suspect it has something to do with the pleasure I get from seeing someone share my experience. When someone feels the emotional impact of…
Read MoreMy Mother Gives Me a Writing Lesson
(In honor of Mother’s Day, I’m giving another life to this old post.) As I dream of spring on this cold January day, I’m reading through some old letters from my mother, written in her widowhood, and I’m struck by the sound of my own voice in hers and the lesson she offers the writer…
Read MoreAsk Lee
I’ve been doing this blog for several years, and from time to time I get the feeling that I’m repeating myself. When that happens, I know it’s time for me to ask you what you want to know. Please send me your questions. I’ll try to get to them in the weeks to come. If…
Read MoreLee K. Abbott and the Power of the Sentence
In remembrance of my former colleague, Lee K. Abbott, I offer the first sentence of his story, “Time and Fear and Somehow Love”: Since, as she conceived it, the letter was to be the final word on the subject, she endeavored to start slowly, then lead up to, as fine drama does, those moments of…
Read MoreYour Writer’s Journey
Here at the end of another semester, I’m reading work from my MFA students and thinking how privileged I am to be at least a small part of their writers’ journeys. Some of the students are completing their degrees and thinking about their next steps. I want to tell them, as I’m telling you now,…
Read MoreMuscle Up: Writing Stronger Sentences
We prose writers spend so much time thinking about characterization and plot that we often overlook the importance of the artfully crafted sentence. “All you have to do is write one true sentence,” Ernest Hemingway famously said. “Write the truest sentence that you know.” His work strove for accuracy, honesty, and clarity, and it all…
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