Charlotte Rains Dixon

Happy May Day. My student, Ben Norwood, sent me a wonderful end-of-the-semester gift today–a copy of the The Republic of Letters, the journal begun by Saul Bellow.  Ben translated one of the stories in it, a piece called, “Xavier the Leper,” by Alberto Rangel, from Spanish. I’m just in awe of this. The story is […]

"A writer should be like a playwright–putting people on stage, putting ideas on stage, making the reader become the audience."  David Halberstam, in the New York Times article about his death

I’ve been working on removing an excess of interiority from my novel.  Scenes which otherwise might clip along are bogged down by my protagonist, the beloved Emma Jean, thinking too damn much.  We’ve been talking about this bad habit of mine in my weekly writing group, but I hadn’t internalized it until I started reading […]

The other day I dragged myself to the gym.  (Yes, I do manage to accomplish that once in awhile.)  The man on the treadmill next to me, who later introduced himself as Richard, was reading a Michael Connelly novel and I was reading Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson. We were discussing the vagaries of putting […]

I can never decide if I like writing the rough draft or rewriting better.  Actually, it usually depends on where I am in the novel.  If I’m writing a rough draft, I wish I was rewriting.  If I am rewriting, I long for the freedom of the rough draft.

Brings to mind a saying my Dad used to have hanging in his basement workshop:

Today, I know all about Rosie’s decision to leave The View.  I know all about the storms that ravaged towns in Texas near the border to Mexico.  All about them. Why?  Because I’m supposed to be writing.  This is my morning to work on my novel.  Its so much easier to look at stories on […]

I’ve just begun a companion blog to Word Strumpet.  Its a place to park longer articles and will more informational and less topical.  You can find it here. I just posted my article on story over there.

Suddenly, it is a single-spaced world.  This thought just occurred to me as I was editing an article I am going to post on my new companion blog.  Last time I tried importing something from Word that was double-spaced I got everything all messed up, even after I’d figured out how to do it without […]