You’ve seen it before, on Star Trek or an episode of the Twilight Zone, in movies and books and slush pile stories: in this story, the white people are oppressed! Or it’s a matriarchy or in this society it’s normal to be gay and shunned to be straight… etc, etc. Read more…
My poetry professor gave out an assignment to write five interconnected, longer poems. The goal was that by the end of his course we would all write book-length poems. I was mad in love with the old victorian mansions of University Circle, now serving as office buildings, fraternity houses, and Read more…
“Men have no standards,” my friend joked recently. His wife said, “Now, what does that say about me, sweetie? If you have no standards…” it had the air of an oft-repeated conversation and I was irritated by the complacent amusement of both the women and men in the room. “No, Read more…
When I was seven years old, I received incontrovertible proof that fairies were real. It happened on a summer’s day. Midsummer? Maybe. I woke in the bed I shared with my twin sister to find a silver ring on my ring finger. I’d never seen it before. It was a Read more…
When I was still unpublished, I spent a lot of time worrying about My First Line and Hooking The Reader. If my very first line didn’t grab the reader by the throat and make them incapable of doing anything other than reading on, how would I ever break in?? This… Read more…
So once upon a time I thought I’d write about story shapes – the idea that stories can be thought of in these vague archetypical forms, and that will help with writing them. I jumped right in with “The Caper” and then I made this draft post titled “The Hero Read more…
“When do you stop revising?” A friend asked me recently. “You can stop?” was my initial response, but the truth is more nuanced than that. (And besides, that answer was Not Helpful.) At some point in my writing career – I’m going to say it was two laptops ago so Read more…