Without Geography You're Nowhere: Why Setting Matters
We are awash in narrative. It arrives on every platform in ever-shorter form. (A Little Life not withstanding.) Which has me wondering,...
Making it Work: 4 Tips for Squeezing Writing between
Some weeks before my artist friend Vicki Paret’s baby arrived, she stretched nine canvases of equal size. She gridded nine rectangles on...
When Less Really Is More: What Comics Can Teach Novelists
Consider the Comic where what’s not on the page is as important as what is. So says comic artist and writer Scott McCloud in his...
Hacking Camp NANOWRIMO
Perhaps you have heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Perhaps, you are not snarky and you have not thought derisively, Oh...
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...
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...
