On Writing Groups
Welcome to 2017, a year in which I am determined to note the big and little things for which I am grateful. I need to do something to combat the shadow of despair that has been with me since Election…
Welcome to 2017, a year in which I am determined to note the big and little things for which I am grateful. I need to do something to combat the shadow of despair that has been with me since Election…
Like many writers, I’m quite introverted. I like quiet. I like a room of my own, a state of low stimulus equilibrium. I’m a listener more than a talker; a watcher more than a doer; risk averse, rather than a…
So, First Draft, we meet again. I just finished your brother a few weeks ago and stuck him in a (virtual) drawer. Don’t worry. You’re definitely meeting the same fate. Oh, stop screaming. Doesn’t the certainty of what’s going to…
I had written twenty, maybe thirty, pages of my first draft when I had the idea of setting the climax at a theme party. I thought it would be fun to put my characters into costumes and get them in…
A few weeks ago, when I walked out of the theater after seeing Moonlight, I experienced a feeling akin to what I felt three days ago when I closed the cover of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time and sat back and…
Fortunate are the writers whose first germ of a novel is a plotline, a concept, a scene, or a theme – ideas that provide a starting point, the bare bones, a guide. Then there’s me. Having grown up in Wisconsin with…