Grub Street’s Muse and the Marketplace conference is this weekend. It’s always a good time of the year in Boston. Hundreds of writerly folks gather to talk craft, to talk publishing, to talk to each other, and to drink (because…
The slogans zing at writers everywhere we go, from tree-dangling kittens on social media to well-meaning cocktail party guests. Keep the Faith. Never Give Up. Butt in Chair. And we spoon feed it to ourselves as well, suckling at the…
It wasn’t so long ago that I was a person who kept her calendar in stone. I did not flake, bail, ghost, disappear, get busy, or “forget.” If I said I was going, I went. Period. End of story. I was that…
This post first appeared on Jungle Red Writers in September 2015. I’m from a small town. East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Population: almost 11,000 when I last lived there. That was 1993, the year I graduated high school. A half-year earlier Kent…
We are awash in narrative. It arrives on every platform in ever-shorter form. (A Little Life not withstanding.) Which has me wondering, who has the time to dwell in a Brontë moor? And what’s the pay off? Setting: A History…
I confess. I don’t kill my darlings. I bury them alive. All those loved and discarded words. Full paragraphs and partial lines, whole pages and single, unwanted words. I gather them up, and I deposit them into a document that…