Last week I wrote a post about being critiqued. Today I was talking with my friend Suzanne about this getting critiqued and I thought a bit more about it. What we talked about was that feeling you have when you are confident in your work, and in you step sprightly to meet with the agent […]
Jason, over at Blog Catalog, asked how to stay on track with a longer project. He said he had started several novels and tended to lose interest by the second or third chapter. Losing interest in a long-term project happens. I tend to get an idea, get all excited about it, start a notebook and […]
It has come to me in a blinding flash that A. this blog needs something and B. that something is writing exercises. Eureka! (Or as my late father would say, E-Da-Ho! He was from Idaho, and he always said the way the state got its name was when the Native Americans saw the light coming […]
I don’t care what anybody says, its hard to have your work critiqued. I know, I know, its not personal, and we shouldn’t take it as such, and blah blah blah. Do you know anybody who doesn’t take critiques personally? And yet, learning to be critiqued is an integral part of the writing process, because […]
The post I wrote last week on courage and good writing seemed to strike a chord with lots of people. In it, I repeated the question that Carol Harper, one of the Mayborn workshop participants, asked me: does courage equal good writing? I wrote that courage doesn’t necessarily equal good writing, yet courage is a […]
Did I mention that the Mayborn was chock full of informative lectures and panels? I know I’ve talked about my fabulous, amazing workshop, and the Oprah Incident, and a few social events here and there. But lest you think that the entire conference was held in the bar, I now present a run-down of a […]
One of the participants in last Friday’s Mayborn book manuscript workshop, Carol Harper, asked me a question via e-mail today. Does courage equal good writing? I love this question because nobody’s ever asked it of me before, and in all the years I’ve been pondering writing and talking about writing, I’ve never heard it discussed. […]
It wasn’t all about Nan Talese and Oprah at the Mayborn last weekend, far from it. While the lectures and panels and discussions and networking comprise the meat of the conference, the side dishes are the workshops. Conducted all day Friday, they follow the standard workshopping procedure of every MFA program in the country. (Actually, […]
I wrote in an earlier post that the best thing about being a writer is never being bored. Here’s another great thing: no matter what happens you can always write about it. Good or bad, its all material.
At the moment I’m in the Kansas City airport, waiting for a flight to Dallas, having been bumped off the flight from Portland. But here I am, happily writing a blog post. Because I’m a writer. So, A. I’m never bored, and B. no matter what happens I can always write about it. Everything is material.
In her wonderful book, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg talks about how writers live twice–the first time when they actually experience something, and the second when they write about the experience.
BTW, this is kind of a strange airport–no offense to all you wonderful Kansasites. Or Kansasers. Or whatever the correct term would be. You have to leave the gate to find anything at all to eat–and the pickings are pretty slim when you find food. I’ll have to go back through security to board my flight.
But I’m happy. Because I’m writing.
You’ll also notice I’m not linking to anything, and that is because I have a questionable wireless connection and a battery going dead.
In three hours I’ll be in Dallas. In four hours I’ll be drinking a margarita with the most wonderful and amazing Doni Wilson. Can’t wait!
The August issue of O magazine has a special section on "Inside the Writer’s Mind," wherein they interview "six terrific novelists" about writing. The first question they ask is, "What’s the best thing about being a writer?" Jeffrey Eugenides , author of Middlesex, said that, "The best thing is also the worst thing. It’s that, […]
