Steal time to write, as if time is a commodity, something to hoard and, well, steal. From my children and from my friends and even from myself…
Category: Writing Life
Our Writing Life column archive, which features an array of guest contributors.
The Writing Life: Publish Envy by Hilary Meyerson
Jealousy is a bitch. Professional jealousy is a bitch with a book advance.
Writing Life: What if I never get that book deal? by Lisa Ahn
Most writers are seekers, restless. If we were satisfied with the here-and-now, the exactly-as-it-is, there would be no call to wander, to imagine otherwise. We pick at all the seams. We pry the edges of “what if?” We are good at doubt and wonder, at the possible and maybe.
Writing Life: The fact of the matter: Mythology as creative nonfiction by William Henderson
No matter your opinion about John D’Agata, recently under-fire for his slippery (some might say sloppy) handling of facts in his 2010 book, About a Mountain, the use of innovation (read: fudged facts) in nonfiction – which he argues is his right as the author, especially when helping foster a more artistic truth – created a genre, of sorts, situated between fiction and non, creative nonfiction, which even this magazine uses to define what it publishes every month.
The Writing Life: Notes from an AWP Virgin by mensah demary
The so-called “writing life” will sweep me toward Chicago as the 2012 AWP Conference and Book Fair draws near. This is my first time attending the event; I don’t know what to expect beyond the advice and wisdom espoused by AWP veterans.
The Writing Life: Tricking the Eye — Beating Writer’s Block with the Dutch Golden Age by Lisa Ahn
The blank screen. The blinking cursor. The sudden, irresistible urge to dig out that last chocolate bar from the Halloween stash in the back of the pantry. Writer’s block can take a lot of forms, but it still plays the same old tune, a tick-tock insinuation that maybe, this time, the words are really gone.…
The Writing Life: Revising by William Henderson
Revision. The idea of revision is interesting, especially in terms of revising a memoir, because I have to decide which moments from my life, from the year covered in the book, should stay and which moments should go.
The Writing Life: Tastes by Hilary Meyerson
I’ve been involved in a love triangle for almost twenty years. My two loves have never met, but the time is coming. My first love is the man with whom I’ve shared my public and private life; the other is my writing, a more private love. One would think they would be easy to introduce, but I have not found it so.
Writing Life: Twitter Me This, by Lisa Ahn
Twitter is the consummate writer’s salon. Like the salons of old, it is a forum for the exchange of ideas. That alone is a boon to writers – the ebb and flow of “why” and “how.” Politics, philosophy, science, religion and gossip intersect in the slipstream, the crisscrossing currents. Between the spoken and implied, we discover characters to hatch, plots to ripen, settings to evolve. The daily unfolding of millions of lives is a trove awaiting plunder.
The Writing Life: Writing is simple; all you have to do is sit at a typewriter and bleed by William Henderson
Someone once said that writers write the stories that they badly want to read. These stories that writers write in order to read the stories they badly want to read are the stories that writers remember. Sometimes the words are overwhelming, if only because they often live inside for so long. These words become memories of events that have or haven’t happened, depending on the writer’s genre: nonfiction or fiction. These memories – our memories – inform who we are and what we do.
