I recently saw the new Marvel movie, Dr. Strange. I enjoyed its dazzling dreamlike special effects but also found it helpful to me as writer. I’ve been struggling with how to make the villain in my novel into a fully…
Every morning, before I open my eyes and sit up, I steel myself. This will be the day. Today I am going to open my eyes and they will work. I will see. I lost my eyesight so young I’m…
Writing marginalized content in a mainstream world is balls. Aside from the extra pitfalls we as such authors have to look out for, aside from the extra attention and reflection and detail such writing demands, we also hit a nerve-wracking…
Ah! The idea of one solid week of writing, and nothing but writing, kept me going for months. I had booked this week away back in June, just after returning from my annual four-day retreat with my writing group. My…
We write about the other with varying degrees of rigor and success. Homer’s default was narrow (white, male, hetero, warrior), but even that long ago he tasked himself with imagining his way into immortals. Chaucer wrote in the voice of…
Recently, a cab driver was driving me home from the airport. After hearing I’d just come from Dallas, he gazed in the mirror back at me and loudly and, completely unsolicited, declared: “Everywhere you’ve been, darling, I’ve been. Everything you’ve…