To find whole new chapters in favorite books, as if the pages stuck together on earlier readings were now magically revealed. A secret passage from the outside of the house straight into my room, so if I was on the…
Blog Archives
Gold in the green beans. Why?
My father grew up in Brooklyn, during the Great Depression, in a house so close to the next one that once, when a spark ignited the shingles, a neighbor simply jumped from his roof to my father’s and stamped out…
Call me names!
When I was about two, my mother said I invented a game called “Names.” The rules were simple: she regaled me with terms of endearment while I basked in the glow of Honey, Sugar, Sugar Pie, Sweetheart, Sweet Pea, Sugar…
When Point of View exercises get personal
I’ll be leading a workshop on Point of View for the Knoxville Writers Guild (more on that here). In years of teaching college fiction classes, I’ve found that Point of View units can have dramatic personal impacts. Once again, art…
Tagged with: Dont' Ask Don't Tell, Knoxville Writers Guild, Point of View exercises, teaching fiction
Posted in Writing
Posted in Writing
His brother’s hands, before and after
One of the rewards of the writing life is teaching writing. I taught composition for some years at a US military base in Naples, Italy. I remember a young soldier who had grown up poor in the Caribbean. He struggled…
12 Reasons You Need a Writing Group
You just don’t feel like writing today/aren’t inspired/lost faith. . . . The group meets on Wednesday. They expect some work from you and don’t really care about your drama. Besides, they’ve been there and pushed through and expect you…
Creating My Red Summer
The first plot piece of my novel in progress (current title: Out of the Red Summer) was set when I was in grade school. I was maybe 10 when my parents took me to see All the Way Home, the…
Tagged with: Agee, All the Way Home, Carpetbag Theater, Creating a novel, Death in the Family, Inspiration for Novel, Knoxville, Knoxville Race Riot, Maurice Mays, Novel themes, Summer of 1915
Posted in New novel
Posted in New novel
How did s/he get that way?
Last week, I led a workshop on memoir writing at a local senior center. Amazing stories came out, funny, sad, and precious. Here’s a variant of an exercise we did that I think would be useful for writers, and just…
