My family doctor tells me I’m doing great a little over three weeks after my stroke. She says I can go back to teaching. I confess that I already have. I taught my advanced undergraduate creative nonfiction workshop last night, I tell her, a three-hour class. She wants to know whether it felt comfortable to…

Comments from the Convalescent:  When I began this convalescence, I envisioned catching up on books I’ve been wanting to read in between naps. What I’ve learned, though, is that restoration is hard work. First come the sleepless nights when the anxiety of what might happen with my next breath overwhelms me. Then comes the depression…

CEREBRAL ARTERY OCCLUSION, UNSPECIFIED; WITH CEREBRAL INFARCTION The language of stroke. The language of my stroke. The doctors can’t pinpoint the exact cause, but they have a culprit under surveillance: a patent foramen ovale. When all of us are in the womb, there’s a natural opening between the left and right atria of the heart.…

I designed a new writing exercise for my MFA creative nonfiction workshop last week, and contrary to what a good teacher should have done (stating the objective of the exercise before leading the students through it) I purposely eliminated that step and jumped right in. I didn’t want the students to write toward an objective,…

This morning, my Facebook friend, Susan Cushman (check out her blog, “(Not) Writing on Wednesdays” at http://susancushman.com/blog-pen-palette/), made me aware of a story she found on another blog, “HighRoadpost” by Lisa Joiner (http://highroadpost.com/). It’s the story of a book that Lisa found in the women’s room at LAX on a day when she and her…

Last week in my MFA creative nonfiction workshop, the issue of nostalgia in memoir came up, and we explored the question of how a memoirist can deal in nostalgia without becoming nostalgic. Hmm. . . that may at first sound like a goofy question to chase around the workshop table, but please bear with me.…

When I was a boy, my mother often said to me, “Don’t make a scene.” So I grew up to be a writer in part, perhaps, so I could make all the scenes I wanted. When we write narratives, whether fictional or the personal narratives of memoirs and essays, we need to give ourselves permission…

I just got back from teaching in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Workshop, and I wanted to give a recap of the craft class that I taught. The session was called “Taking Care at the End: The Art of Misdirection.” So please permit me a digression. The photo below was taken by…

Why is it, once you reach a certain age, that Sundays are loaded with nostalgia? Today, I’m  thinking of summer Sundays when I lived on our farm in southeastern Illinois. I’m talking about an eighty-acre plot of land on the Lawrence County side of the County Line Road. Eighty acres of clay soil in Lukin…

Remember those high school days when you were always worrying over your popularity even if you acted like you weren’t, when you were trying to define a workable identity for yourself: a jock, a cheerleader, a stoner, a loner, a straight arrow, a good citizen, a lover, a fighter, and the list goes on. Remember…