I run a nonprofit writing center, Word Street, that provides free tutoring and writing instruction to kids, and one thing I like to do to raise money is get writers to come to lovely downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts to read for the people. This year it was Lydia Davis and Amy Hempel on April 17. These [...]
Category Archives: Writing
In Search of J.D. Salinger, Part Two
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I’ve been huge into biographies lately. I read one on F. Scott Fitzgerald last summer, and I picked up one on John Steinbeck after writing to a Steinbeck preservation society to ask for the one they tend to endorse. I got a quick reply from a volunteer who waxed critical of a particular one I [...]
In Search of J.D. Salinger, Part One
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
A writer has his obsessions, his themes, that he continually comes back to in his work. The obsessions reflect what has been eating him from the inside out for as long as he can remember. He may find inspiration in a distant and snow-covered mountain; in the big beautiful lips of his first-born son; or [...]
The New Cliche, Part One
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
This is, most definitely, an incomplete list of things you should cease doing, phrases you should avoid using, and other little bits of cleverness that make me dislike and stop reading you.
Using Specific Song Titles as a Way to Inform Setting: Are you so lazy and unable to construct an authentic setting that you have [...]
Pork Chops and Arkansas; Isn’t That Swell
Saturday, August 9, 2008
I never told you about Arkansas.
I read a book called Arkansas, by John Brandon. It’s a McSweeney’s book (of course), but seriously, there are more than a couple of McSweeney’s books and stories I do not like at all. This one I liked, though. Brandon gave me my Denis Johnson, circa Jesus’ Son, fix without [...]
Still Like Dzanc
Saturday, August 2, 2008
My story collection was rejected by Dzanc Books a couple of days ago. This one hurt a little more than the others considering that I really felt a connection with this publisher. The two guys I had been in contact with, Dan Wickett and Steve Seighman, were professional, responded to my emails right away, and [...]
At Play in the Fields of Time
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Mere minutes after my meeting with Chris Bachelder, he gave what the Conference called a “craft talk” on The Clock in Fiction. The thesis of the lecture was that most excellent stories have a “back wall,” or a point the story will not go past. In other words, if the reader (or the characters, for [...]
I am Relentless
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Part of the experience of being at the Juniper Writers Conference was meeting with one of the teachers for a manuscript conference. I had to pay an extra couple hundred dollars for it, but it seemed worth it. I sent the first thirty pages of my short prose collection ahead of my arrival; they assigned [...]
Meeting Noy Holland
Saturday, July 19, 2008
I had never heard of Noy Holland before the conference at UMASS, and didn’t know that it was, in fact, she who inadvertently flicked (flicked?) tossed her long blonde hair behind her, draping it onto my bare knees during the Bachelder/Davis conversation.
As a participant in the conference, I chose to attend certain “craft sessions” before [...]
Keys Together on a Ring
Friday, June 27, 2008
Despite what my wife thinks, I spent only a short span of time marveling over the numerology associated with my sons’ birthdays. Most of the day I worked on the keys story. I added some stuff and put it all together into one piece.
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Later, I suppose I had to admit that I got a bit [...]