“Read, read, read,” implored William Faulkner, “Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.” Ray Bradbury shared Faulkner’s exuberant enthusiasm for reading, “If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, … Continue reading
Who doesn’t love the Beatles? I didn’t, at least not until later in high school. I dismissed the band, not out of a genuine dislike of their music but for the same reason I rejected Britney Spears and Abercrombie and Fitch: I was pretentious. Like most insufferable hipsters in the early 2000s, I detested anything … Continue reading
Self destruction can take many forms: men, martinis, one too many lines of coke, drug-fueled nights staying up until dawn. My favorite form of masochism is browsing LinkedIn. Though going on the professional platform almost always makes me feel bad, I do it time and time again. And what happens? I end up in a … Continue reading
Since I finished my last project a few weeks ago, I haven’t felt compelled to put pen to page. I was stuck in limbo: what did I want to write next? what did I even have to say? I felt myself oscillating between two contradictory impulses: the instinct to wait for the muse’s mysterious reappearance … Continue reading
I love studying superb sentences. I get almost unparalleled pleasure from uncovering how parts of a sentence work together to produce an effect. You could imagine my delight when I discovered Allegra Hyde’s beautifully-articulated essay “What Makes a Great Opening Line?”. Why, Hyde wonders, does one fall in love at first sentence? In our distracted … Continue reading
I’ve never conceived myself as a fiction writer. Though I’ve loved getting lost in a great story for as long as I can remember (my fondest memories are huddling with the American Girl series under floral covers), I never imagined I could write them myself. Writing stories was for other people, people more imaginative and inventive than myself. As … Continue reading
Have you ever been able to recall a memory in evocative detail? Though you haven’t been to Venice in five years, you can still recollect how a light October drizzle fell over St. Mark’s square. Or maybe you can remember the lush greenness of the woods whooshing by your window when you took a bus … Continue reading
Master of the macabre Stephen King once said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Many aspiring writers think writing requires a magic formula: a certain number of pages or words a day, a particular brand of pencil, a superstitious … Continue reading
Sometimes our relationship with the muse feels like a situationship. Our connection has many of the characteristics of a serious romance, but none of the commitment. Like a couple, we’ll listen attentively to each other’s problems, we’ll text each other “how’s your day?”, we’ll kiss, we’ll have sex. We might even go to Saturday brunch … Continue reading
We don’t usually think of writers as fashionable people. Indeed, the word “writer” calls to mind a slob in slippers and ratty bathrobe. Just as his desk is a disaster area of dirty dishes and day old coffee mugs, papers scribbled with half-formed ideas strewn everywhere, his appearance is disheveled: he hasn’t combed his hair … Continue reading
The Blank-Faced Confidante 