The other night in class, my teacher gave us an excellent reminder. I’m passing it along to you. It takes a while to learn to write, he said. Some people dive right into a novel and teach themselves by writing. …
Not Just Writing, but Writing Well
I’m flipping through the notebook from my novel-writing studio this semester led by James Sallis. Just pages and pages of scrawled notes. Some of them are marked with asterisks. I put those by the bits of Sallis Wisdom I especially …
Writing the First Draft: Are you a Picasso or a Pollack?
My husband and I are in the garage, painting. He’s building a shelving unit to hold our many books. The boards are arranged on a tarp on the garage floor, and we’re painting the base coat. The paint is thick …
Twelve Posts on Writing, Day 12: Always new, always learning
I’m sitting at a cafe with Jim Sallis. We’re eating oatmeal, drinking coffee, talking about writing. We’re both working hard to finish our current novels. He’s had 12 novels published and won a bunch of awards and had lots of …