Category Archives: Texas

A Writer’s Notebook: Mapping a story

This past Tuesday, I visited Zayed University to speak to an education class studying youth literature and preparing to write young adult stories of their own. (I’ll write a fuller post on this experience later this weekend.) We talked about books they were reading and how they might begin to write their own stories. TheContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Mapping a story”

11-11: Memoir review (Elmer Kelton)

A short while ago I mentioned that I plan to read new types of books this year — eleven new categories of books, in fact — and so far, I’ve read a lot of graphic novels. Which isn’t really new for me, and which certainly isn’t on my list of eleven categories. But I just sneakedContinue reading “11-11: Memoir review (Elmer Kelton)”

“The United States of Texas”

I’ve written a lot about Texas, both in my fiction and in this blog (most notably in my blog post on Texas regionalism), partly because Texas is so diverse it leaves room for a lot of literary exploration.  But many people outside Texas–and probably many people in Texas, as well–might not realize that Texas isContinue reading ““The United States of Texas””

A Writer’s Notebook: The great outdoors

This is a fairly old-school, simple exercise, but it’s one I keep returning to again and again.  But as usual, more on that below. I’ve never seen the skies in other vast states, like, say, Wyoming or Montana, but I’ve seen skies in California, skies in New York, skies in Wisconsin and Florida. And itContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: The great outdoors”

A Writer’s Notebook: 1,000 words

This exercise calls for writing from a photograph. This is the photo I used (click on the photo to go directly to the photo series that includes this pic): For a description of the exercise, see below.  But first, what I wrote…. It was sunny but cool that Sunday afternoon when we drove out toContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: 1,000 words”

A Writer’s Notebook: Revision

I’m chest deep in a revision of my novel right now, but I’m also reading Alice Munro, who makes me want to work on short fiction. So I figured this week, I’d put my hands together and do a revision exercise on one of my long-problematic short stories. Because this is slightly complicated, I’m goingContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Revision”