The deal about essays. Topic #1. Direction. It was horrible. Finally me. Stepping off the world. Writing therapy. Green. Man, I hope I’m not a 90-year-old woman someday still talking about how terrible my stupid mother was, but she gave me so much material to work with.
A piece of writing I like. We are. This is me right now (and usually), thinking ’bout stuff We are who we are — I’ve been thinking about that so much lately, and writing about it here, reflected through a passage from The Goldfinch, reflected through thinking about my kids, and filtered through my own sense of who I am.
Even though I can’t seem to stop thinking this kind of thing (and doing it), I think it’s hilarious the way we resist ourselves. The way so much energy goes into that. Caveat #1: Not everyone does this, or at least to the same degree. Caveat #2: pushing against who we “are” is how we grow! On the “About the Queen” tab above, I came up with 25 ways to finish the sentence “I am….”.
To be someone who gardens and loves it. The sadness of insecurity. In late 1993, when I decided to go to college, I was living in Huntsville, Alabama.
I had three very young kids and so my option was the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In my situation, there was no chance of applying to a variety of schools and then picking which one I wanted, if more than one accepted me. UAH is a small campus, though quite good for engineers and space-related programs, since Marshall Space Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal are there. Of course I was not interested in those programs — my plan was psychology, and that department (while fine!) Was certainly not one of the top programs in the country, let’s say. Exodus. The one-note samba. In the dark of an early summer morning, I walk my neighborhood.
Two miles, 45 minutes. There are so few streetlights, I see brilliant starlight overhead, Orion’s Belt, a piece of the moon spilling light on the black street between the trees, making the shadows even darker. Rounding the corner, I see three deer, alert but unmoving, standing in the yard of a mid-century modern home. Although it’s 6am, surely late enough for people to be awake and getting ready for work, the houses I pass are uniformly dark. The houses are beautiful and stylish, built in the 1960s. And yet as I walk through the neighborhood, just slightly afraid in the deep dark, all the homes look ominous to me.
I am the inverse observer. Books and Authors. Once I was talking to my therapist in New York about my anxieties about calling myself a writer.
Why, she asked, why is that so frightening? You write every day. Aside from legitimacy issues (Don’t I have to be published to call myself a writer? What I don’t know about writing…. ….could fill the Internet.
Dirt(y) Every other Wednesday I have an hour-long Skype writing session with my friend Marian, who lives in NJ.
When I lived in NYC we sometimes met to write together, so I was thrilled when she had the great idea to continue over Skype. We take turns: one session I’ll bring three one-word prompts that we respond to, and when we finish that she reads something she’s working on—the following session two weeks later, we switch. It’s a good motivator to make us get some writing done on our own.
Yesterday was my week to provide the writing prompts, and one of the words I brought was “dirty.”
Publishing. Notebooks. Agents. The MacDowell Colony. Daily Routines: Fred Rogers. Ten rules for writing fiction. Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin 1 Never open a book with weather.
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want. 2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. 3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. 5 Keep your exclamation points under control.
Great writing books. It's never been a better time to be a writer.
Hold on buckaroos — I can almost hear your protests and long-held-in sobs. Now it's true that a handful of ginormous conglomerates have swallowed up many American publishing companies. The Writers Studio. The Writers Studio is founded in 1987 on the belief that when the desire to write is strong enough, anyone can learn the technique necessary for full creative expression.
Advisory board: Kathryn Court, Carl Dennis, Marc Frons, Jennifer Egan, Julia Glass, Bill Henderson, Edward Hirsch, James Lasdun, Matthew Klam, Robert Pinsky, Amanda Moretti, Grace Schulman, Rosanna Warren, Galen Williams, in memorium: Yehuda Amichai JOIN US FOR OUR NEXT BIG READING Saturday, April 26, 7 p.m.: Writers Studio faculty members and master class students Lisa Bellamy, Rebecca Cooney, Lesley Dormen, Rachael Nevins and Cynthia Weiner. 10 Universities Offering Free Writing Courses Online. See our list of universities that offer free online writing courses. Learn about what courses are available and what topics they cover to find the course that's right for you. Online Writing Courses for Credit Many schools offer free online courses and materials through OpenCourseWare (OCW) projects.
While formal admission isn't necessary to access lectures and other materials, these courses don't usually award college credit. Students looking for the same ease of access and the opportunity to apply their study time towards a degree or certificate program might want to consider courses that can lead to an alternative form of credit. For far less than the cost of enrolling in a traditional class, Education Portal offers hundreds of online courses that allow students to start working their way towards real college credit. Free Online Non-Credited Writing Courses. How to Write First Thing in the Morning.
Photo courtesy of Peter Gene As I write these words, it’s a little after 4:00 a.m. and my wife and kids are sleeping. The house is dark and quiet, with no TV or music playing, no conversation to distract the voice in my head. It’s the perfect writing environment, for me at least. When we write, we are speaking with a voice in our heads, and that voice is communicated through our fingertips and onto paper or the digital whitespace. The more noise that’s around us, the more difficult it is to hear our voice. Since You Asked by Cary Tennis, Go away, can't you see I'm writing? Dear Reader, A correction: In my Jan. 2, 2008, column I gave the impression that Eli’s Rehab Report was a publication aimed at drug rehabs. It is not. It is a publication aimed at physical therapy rehabs. So a correction has been posted on Salon, and the erroneous material has been deleted from the column.
Troubling.info. Eight rules for writing fiction: Writing Exercises : Writing Forward. Posted by Melissa Donovan on · Fiction writing exercises for story development. Fiction writing exercises can help you discover storytelling techniques and provide ideas and inspiration for your fiction writing projects. Top 10 Blogs for Writers – 2007/2008. By Michael Stelzner The nominations flooded in for our second annual contest. We were very pleased to see that blogs dedicated to writing have grown substantially. The nominees have been carefully examined, with the greatest weight on the quality of their content. 4 Must-Read Articles for Writers. Cristina Nehring on What’s Wrong With the American Essay. By Cristina Nehring His gaze has been so worn by the procession Of bars that he no longer sees. —“The Panther,” Rainer Maria Rilke The essay is in a bad way.