Here”s a bit of advice from Robert Louis Stevenson, in writing about the genesis of Treasure Island (from his 1905 short work Essays in the Art of Writing). He speaks to the imaginative power of starting by making a map! The story begins in 1881 in the Scottish Highlands, during a rainy spell spent confined… [Read more…]
December 15, 2009
“When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.” – George Bernard Shaw “The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.” —James Yorke, mathematician “The best sentence? The shortest.” – Anatole France, French poet and novelist, winner… [Read more…]
August 29, 2009
Last week I did a pleasant book-signing at Boswell Book Co. (for A Guide to Fantasy Literature; my thanks to Daniel Goldin, proprietor, and Jason, for hosting!). Boswell Books is a Milwaukee indie bookstore, named for James Boswell (1740–95), a literary Scottish laird, described by one biographer as a complicated fellow, with “his rippling good… [Read more…]
July 21, 2009
To learn to see and write better, there are great books to inspire you. One of the finest, an exquisite book of nature writing, is Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), winner of a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, an account of a year spend looking closely at the world centered around a creek in… [Read more…]
April 6, 2009
Don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying Little Dorrit on PBS the last few weeks. Reminded me of some lines from G.K. Chesterton (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874–1936, author of the Father Brown mysteries, The Man Who Was Thursday, Orthodoxy, and The Everlasting Man, which had a big influence on C.S. Lewis, among others). Among… [Read more…]
January 22, 2009
Imagery for a master writer isn’t just coming up with a nice turn of phrase . . . one that conjures up a sunset suddenly appearing like a distant marching band turning the corner . . . or the sense of a breeze on the skin like a silk scarf. A truly compelling image is… [Read more…]
December 12, 2008
As 2008 prepares to lead us into 2009, here are a few thoughts (about creativity, the writing process, and looking ahead) to savor: Fiction. . . . It’s like goading a mongoose and a cobra into battle and staying with them to see who wins. – Shauna Singh Baldwin, author of What the Body Remembers… [Read more…]
November 10, 2008
In a 2004 interview with Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate (2004-06), on the PBS News Hour, Kooser talked about writing with clarity – so that a piece or passage (in his case, a poem) could be understood by the average person. He recalled how early in his career, when he worked in the insurance business,… [Read more…]
November 5, 2008
No Plot! No Problem! Or as the Guinness guys shout: Brilliant! Or is it: No clue! What is NaNoWriMo? A great surge of literary energy? Or a Feast of Fools? From their website: National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write… [Read more…]
November 3, 2008
A farewell tip of the hat to Louis “Studs” Terkel (1912–2008), who passed away last Friday. I owe a great personal debt to his inspiration. His books got me started in collecting oral history and writing my first book, an effort of many years to record the stories and music of ordinary, homegrown fiddlers, the… [Read more…]
The Writer's Handbook
June 26, 2010
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