the writing life
March 12, 2010
- A question was posed by a fellow blogger: Why do we write? On the face of it, it seems like a simple enough question with a simple answer. Looks can be deceiving. My immediate response was an Alice James quote: " I think if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather what doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of loneliness and desolation which ...
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March 8, 2010
- Literary Bodysnatching“The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson” fits neatly into the flourishing genre of literary bodysnatching. … written in the person or from the point of view of a dead, great writer…But all are perfect for the age of too much information. The genre thrives on a contemporary desire to fill in the blanks, and to grant spinsterish ladies the sexual desires they so ...
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January 22, 2010
- Write what you know. How about write what you sort of know? I’m a suburban housewife, far removed from the gritty life of the streets. I must have been crazy to write “Bad Trip,” a story about a crack house, a crack whore and a pimp along with a naïve help desk technician who is trying to be a Good Samaritan. The germ of the story came out of my idea folder—an old newspaper clipping ...
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January 8, 2010
- Elizabeth Gilbert is funny, smart and a good writer. This video made me laugh and cry. http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
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January 1, 2010
- Decade revisited In the spirit of it all, having only just realised that this is a new decade as well as a new year (bit slow, me), I thought about 1999. That was the year I wrote the first short story that was ever published, during my first visit to the sublime Anam Cara writing retreat which I have since revisited several times and where magic always always happens. Anyhow, I may really ...
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December 27, 2009
- A friend who’s been caught up for months in editing and teaching, and then in all the demands of the holidays, writes that she’s going to enter her “spider-webbed writing room” to see what’s in there. Many writers are in the same position right about now. One common piece of advice for this situation is the logical suggestion that we start by rereading what we last wrote and editing it, ...
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December 16, 2009
- Except for those moments when I wanted to be The Lone Ranger or Zorro (and there were a lot of them--I think it was the masks), mostly I thought I would be an illustrator, and as I got older that got refined into the notion of comic book illustrator. When I was in sixth grade, for a project I wrote up short biographies on about a dozen classical composers, from Bach to Gershwin. Each of these ...
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November 25, 2009
- It seems a bit paltry to have a single holiday to give thanks when I have so much for which to be grateful. I am grateful for my online friends and for my fans. (Odd to think I actually have fans!) I am grateful for the readers of my blog, who never fail to offer support and suggestions. I am especially grateful for my publisher, who understands my books better than I do. But I am most grateful ...
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November 8, 2009
- This seems to be a slow weekend here on the Internet. I can never figure out where people disappear to or why. What could possibly be more fascinating than roaming cyberspace? I realize in some places the weather is too nice to stay inside, in other places it’s too nasty to do anything online. Many writers are involved in National Novel Writing Month. Many others are busy ...
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October 28, 2009
- This is where it gets ugly.Last week I zapped off the manuscript of my new novel to my agent in New York. My wife told me to get working on the next book. It’s not because she’s worried about me slacking off and failing to pay the rent. No, it’s because she knows what happens when I’m not writing.Ever read “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”? When I’m writing, I’m Dr ...
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