The Thing Said: Ten Thoughts on Writing Dialogue in Memoir

Accept the fact that you’ll never remember exactly what someone said. Trust me. You may think you will, but you won’t. The thing said is lost to time; all that remains is the shape you give it as you do your best to call it back. 2. Other people will remember the thing said slightly…

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An Open Letter to My MFA Students

  Lined up on the window ledge in my office are your pictures. Since 2001, when I came to teach at The Ohio State University, I’ve tried to get a photo of each of you, my thesis advisees, and me at Epilog, the end-of-the-year gala reading for the graduating MFAs. I may have missed one…

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Labor Day: Doing the Work

Before I found my way in life and ended up slap-ass lucky with what my father would have called a “pencil-pusher’s job,” I did manual labor. In addition to the farm work that I helped him do, I worked on a Christmas tree farm, and in a shoe factory, a garment factory, and a tire…

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At the Start of the School Year

Another school year is upon us, and, as I do each year, I recall a story that the Chair of the English Department told at the start of the year when I was a Ph.D. student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He said that on the evening before Fall Semester classes were to begin, he…

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My Mother’s Hands

Because my father lost his hands, my mother made a gift of hers. Cuticles ragged, knuckles scraped, fingernails smashed—farm work showed her no mercy. Her hands were made for more delicate things, but she gladly sacrificed them because, really, what else was she to do? My father needed her, and she loved him, so she…

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Persona and the Lyric Poem

This post comes early because I’m off to Vermont bright and early tomorrow morning to teach for a week at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. If you can tolerate it, I’d like to say one word more about persona, this time in connection with poetry. I’ve chosen this old lyric poem…

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Personae and Tone in Fiction

Personae and Tone in Fiction I’m still thinking about this issue of persona and how it contributes to the life of our prose. Part of the pleasure of reading a memoir comes from the resonance of different layers (or personae, if you will) of the narrator vibrating against one another. Does the same hold true…

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The Art of the Twerk: Writing the Miley Cyrus Way

To start. . .ahem. . .with a sentence I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined writing: Miley Cyrus has something to teach us about writing. Intrigued? Read on. Shaking your head in disbelief? Wondering about my sanity? Stick with me. This post is all about the outlandish. It’s about encouraging outrageous personae as…

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Taking the Temperature of Writers’ Conferences

Since we’re in the midst of writers’ conference season, I decided to rerun a post this morning: 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 the wrist,…

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Writing to Preserve

I lost a pocket comb yesterday. It exists somewhere without me now. It was a black pocket comb, purchased in Anchorage, Alaska, to replace another comb that I lost there. I usually don’t lose combs, but now I’ve lost two in two months. * Loss informs so much of my writing. I’m forever interested in…

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