Lessons on Narrative Distance: What Essays Can Teach Novelists
How Not to Write I used to keep a book on my shelf to remind myself how not to write. The book, call it Stricken, consisted of a...
Pow! Zap! What Short Stories Can Teach Novelists
Novels are my second love, the roast beef in my diet. And I relish the meal. But I down short stories like chocolates. For their density....
Dharma Buds: Revision Road with Buddha and the Gecko
I have just spent two-and-a-half years revising my novel.* The odds on getting it published feel, well, long. My writer friends...
Thank You, Junior High
All my favorite books come from a “deep place of junior high trauma.”* From Harriet the Spy to The Outsiders, right on up through Rick...
How Do You Say Hamburger in Farsi? What Ad Writers Can Teach Novelists
Some years ago I taught Communications 201 at Boston University. It was a plum job, as adjunct jobs go, because our students longed to be...
Scents and Sensibility
I lost nearly all my sense of smell when I was eight. One day my socks itched and the next day I was allergic to seemingly everything...