Writing is like playing a sport: if we want to get better, we have to practice everyday. If we want to write, for example, we have to write every morning when we wake up (or, depending on our schedule, every afternoon). But we don’t just simply write- we write to improve a particular skill, … Continue reading
Shakespeare originally coined the phrase “jealousy is a green-eyed monster” but it’s so widely circulated that today the expression has passed into common speech. Why has this image endured for centuries? What spared this characterization from fading into oblivion when so many others slipped into the dusty cracks of history? I suspect it’s because no other writer … Continue reading
When asked what “big magic” inspired her to write Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert replied that as a writer she most often met people who yearned to live creatively but could (or would) not. When she talked to these people, they always had sensible reasons why they couldn’t get to the … Continue reading
Just finished listening to an interesting Dear Sugar podcast about artistic dreams. A listener who calls herself Career Purgatory writes of a common dilemma: should she quit her soul-sucking day job to be a “real” writer or find time to write in her life right now? It’s a prevalent and pernicious myth that to be a … Continue reading
“It is possible to write out of ego. It is possible, but it is also painful and exhausting. Back in my drinking days, I used to strain to be brilliant, to write the best, the most amazing, the most dazzling…Is it any wonder that additives seemed like a good idea, like a secret hidden advantage … Continue reading
Nothing is more toxic to the soul than comparison. Glancing at the biographies of established writers, I feel myself infected with that familiar poison: by the time she was my age, Jodi Picoult was already married with children, had published several books, worked as a creative writing instructor at a private academy and English teacher … Continue reading
William Zinsser, author of perennial classic “On Writing Well,” once argued the “mere serviceable is a drag.” Despite what stuffy academics and the literati might say, I completely agree: the primary goal of writing is entertainment. “What?” you might scoff in disbelief, “what about the nobler goals of information and persuasion, guidance and enlightenment?” Yes, as … Continue reading
How many of us associate big, monumental birthdays with nervous breakdowns? In her exquistely raw advice column Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed attempts to console 26 year old Elissa Bassist, a disheartened aspiring writer who wonders how she can “reach the page” when she can barely “lift her face off the bed.” Like many of us, … Continue reading
French-Russian novelist Francine Du Plessix Gray always begins her writing classes by asking students to compare the following sentences, the first from Nabokov’s memoir of his youth in pre-Revolutionary Russia, Speak Memory, the second from Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. “She turned on the steps to look back at me before descending into a jasmine-scented, … Continue reading
As I focus more on my writing, I find myself more concerned with whether or not my work is original. Reading my writing, I see the glaring marks of other authors: the figurative language of Plath, the gorgeous but conversational musings of Anais Nin. I turn to my blog and I see most of my … Continue reading
The Blank-Faced Confidante 