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‘Narrative’ blog honored
My standards are so low. I don’t feel like I am . . . protecting writing from amateurs or dabblers or those who are simply no good. My students have expressed a profound interest in writing. I let them...
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For Pages and Pages: Truth and the Olympian Quotations of Joseph Mitchell
Reblogged from Aarongilbreath's Blog: As much as I read, I don't find myself rereading too many books. I'm no Larry McMurtry, revisiting the same book year after year. Mostly, I reread essays, and the...
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Robert Caro's "painstaking process"
Reblogged from Elizabeth Browne: I'm tinkering with a nonfiction book idea. By that I mean, I have a book in mind that I'd like to write, and in fact have written bits and pieces of it and collected...
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Europe redux: a blog-free vacation
Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.—Jonah Lehrer* After my...
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Dear Nora,
Reblogged from Superhero Underpants: I will miss you. I remember when Mbot was six months old and I was feeling particularly sorry for myself, I came upon a profile of you in The New Yorker. In today's...
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The ‘So what?’ dilemma
Craft as conduit to art & Brenda Miller’s seminal essay on form. If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind can encompass...
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Spiritual affinities: Tolle, Rilke, Woolf
Spiritual Affinities. I’m pleased to have a guest post today at Daisy Hickman’s Sunny Room Studio on the spiritual insights and strength I’ve drawn from a number of thinkers, especially Eckhart Tolle,...
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John McPhee on writer’s block
In which he nails the issue & I rename this blog Draft No. 4. If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set …...
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My blog turns 5, gets makeover
Finding a blog & website designer and going self-hosted. A meadow near Aspen, Colorado, in June 2013; taken from the window of my sister’s car. As my blog enters its sixth year—July 17th is its...
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Learning the blogging genre
Mistakes & tips from half a decade on the digital frontier. Taken at the Guinness brewery, Dublin, Ireland At a writing conference recently, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in years, the author...
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Choosing love, as person & writer
Q&A: Shirley Showalter reflects on Blush. [Shirley Showalter: Embracing her blush.]In my recent review of Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World I noted how author Shirley Hershey...
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New reading, writing tools
And damn you, Google, Apple, Microsoft! Change can hurt. [My iGoogle page: clean look, dozens of feeds.]On Friday, November 1, I arise and open my computer. Sure to Google’s months of warnings, iGoogle...
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Content + Craft = Art
Lessons learned teaching creative nonfiction to non-majors. This is the second Spring I’ve taught “Writing Life Stories,” which is creative nonfiction for non-majors, college juniors and seniors. As...
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Six quirky posts
I saw a black man with a bible and a sparkler in his hand. He was holding a tent revival and running a firework stand. He said the end of the world is coming, you better get on your knees. Today...
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My blog turns six today!
You can hit the ground running like you’re shot from a gun But going the distance is the hard part, son Everybody looks good at the starting line —Paul Thorn, “Everybody Looks Good at the Starting...
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6 years of unused blog posts
Good and bad, I define these terms Quite clear, no doubt, somehow—Bob Dylan, “My Back Pages” Among 66 aborted uploads: Franzen & Smiley on art & suffering. I’ll probably be blogging a year...
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What has gone missing?
Two writers assess the electronic era in fiction and nonfiction. Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age by Sven Birkerts. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, $16.00 paperback original...
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My dog tale published
[Sure Belle looks cute here, but you have no idea the mayhem she causes.] Writing about our crazy canine teaches me (again) about essaying. At last I’ve documented our family dog’s epic weirdness—and,...
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Writer, know thy own demon
[Full of chipper wisdom here, E.B. White was laid low by allergies, like me.] On illness, hard emotions, and giving readers a high vibration. Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous...
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A special sentence structure
[I took this photo of a ceiling in China.] Cumulative form fosters a rich, lovely, rhythmic prose style. [Nine years ago today, I started this blog. It will be on hiatus with today’s post, my 510th....
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