In the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I was in a serious car accident. A tow truck, racing another tow truck, went the wrong way on a one way street, blew a stop sign, and slammed into my boyfriend’s tin-can of a car. I can still tell you many, many […]
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For the past two years, I have lived outside my comfort zone. Some of that is because of our sudden move to Las Vegas. Not only am I in a new community, a new state, and a new region, I’m also living farther south than I ever have in my life. The sun behaves differently […]
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Those of you who follow me on Facebook probably have an inkling that I really love theater. I do write fiction about it, not as much as I would like, however, in my series about magical dramaturgs. (If you’re interested, the first is “The Scottish Play.”) Since I’ve moved to Las Vegas, I’ve gone to […]
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Recently, a writer friend of mine died—and I was struck by something his family said about his final months. He expected to beat the disease that he was fighting. All of his actions in those last few months were predicated—at least in public—on his recovery from a disease that ultimately no one recovers from. I’m […]
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Nobody cares. Such a sad phrase, particularly when uttered by someone without friends or family. I recently read a marvelous short story that ended with that very concept, although not the phrase itself. I’m not going to talk about that use of the phrase. Anything I say would be facile, because I don’t know your […]
Continue ReadingThanks to one of my readers, I now have a copy of my talk at 20Books to share with you. Enjoy!
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It’s too soon to declare victory. In fact, I’m not sure victory should ever be claimed. Not when it comes to the critical voice that lives in our heads. You know, the one that just shouted out loud (in my head) telling me that sentence two has a passive construction. Um, yeah, Doofus. On purpose. […]
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For years, Dean and I have taught that the critical voice is the enemy of the creative voice. I actually use a diagram when I teach that illustrates the point. It comes from this observation: Human beings crave stories. We do most everything in storytelling form. Learning often comes in the form of storytelling. If […]
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How To Put The Fun Back Into Your Writing
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In January, while I was preparing to teach a craft workshop here in Las Vegas, I was happily reading a lovely essay on the comma in the Oregon Quarterly. The essay, titled “For Love of the Comma,” written by Kate Dyer-Seeley, is beautifully done, and as I read, I was thinking of recommending the piece […]
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