Conversations with Your Ten-Year-Old
I know I haven’t remembered them perfectly, but these are pretty close and definitely capture the spirit of our banter.
Until We Get It Right
We keep going. We write and re-write. We tinker and toil until the thing reaches a level of “right” we can deal with. Then, we send it out there.
Writing Like Jazz: Revising with the Energy Meter
Like a good jazz player, we allow the writing to move us in the direction it needs to go. We focus only on this sentence, this clause, this phrase.
Think Like Vader: Writing Inside Characters
The author needs to get into the heads of her characters and take on that sense of self-righteousness. The author needs to pursue the character’s trust in her own goodness.
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (January 2021)
Ahead of me, not quite at the top, I could see in the starlight the dark neck and the black crew cut of a man in a charcoal suit. I called out to him, and he turned around and saw me.
The Pen: (Often) Mightier than Microsoft Word
Writing with pen and paper offers a different writing experience. When we write by hand, we do not have the allure of the Internet at our disposal.
To My Third Grader on World Kindness Day
While we may not always understand why some people are unkind to others or why some people do bad things, what we can understand is that kindness is always the right answer.
Art Requires Time (The Muse Will Meet Us There)
If it’s important, then we pencil it in. We put it in the calendar. We block off a few hours for curiosity to take us where it needs to go.
Gravity's Rain 331 or The White Continuum
Erasing. Black and White. Pynchon made poignant or problematic or paranoid or just plain wrong.
A Regrettable Myth
I tell my students that writing is hard. Then, I immediately regret it.
