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
I imagine my inner critic as a stern school teacher who wears prim cardigans and too-serious loafers. In her crisp button down shirt and impeccably coiffed hair, she is the paragon of perfectionism. Our inner school teacher is convinced there’s a right way to do things: introductions should have a hook followed by background and … Continue reading
Finishing a project brings about two contradictory emotions: exaltation and dread. On one hand, birthing an idea and witnessing its metamorphosis from squirming caterpillar to a shimmering creature capable of flight offers a sense of gratification few things can. We mere mortals accomplished a feat of God-like proportions: we brought something into being that previously didn’t exist! … Continue reading
“John Laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth.”- Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief “The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only … Continue reading
Why I write. I stole the title of this piece from Joan Didion who stole it from George Orwell. “I write,” she confessed in her superb 1976 essay, “to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Much like … Continue reading
All writers occasionally doubt themselves when they revisit their work. “You, a writer?!?” our censors scoff, “can your sentences be any more choppy?” “And that ending? Could you conclude in a more predictable way? I thought we did away with ‘in the end’ and ‘all and all’ in 2nd grade?” Suddenly, our work, our whole … Continue reading
When contemplating a piece of work, Julia Cameron advises we’d do better to think whom is this work for? whom will it serve? rather than how will it serve me? Pondering this notion of art as service, I’m reminded of Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s luminous Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of his five … Continue reading
“There are two states in which you may exist, person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It’s as ludicrous as saying, ‘I aspire to pick up that piece of paper … Continue reading
The Blank-Faced Confidante 