Today’s exercise is going to be short and relatively uncreative. I’m polishing up a story collection I recently finished, and while most of the stories are published, finished, or well on their way, one is still very much an ugly draft, so I’ve decided to go over that weakest story and do some broad revision.Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Revision checklist”
Category Archives: writing
Photo blog 22
Many thanks to my old college friend, Erin Hostetler, who drove me out to Concord in the snow to see Walden, the graves of the Alcotts, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, and this, the house in which Hawthorne lived and wrote.
The Creative Process (courtesy of Subnormality)
My friend David Maizenberg sent me this today. I’d point out my favorite bit in this, but, well, you’re looking at it. This is actually a pretty solid illustration of my day today, in fact. Awesome.
A Writer’s Notebook: “Uninvited Guests”
Like my early Writer’s Notebook entry “1,000 words,” this exercise requires I post a picture. This picture, though, comes with a title and a caption, which I’ve included with the pic at the right (for the full citation, see the end of the story). Children’s lit fans might recognize the title of this post and/orContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: “Uninvited Guests””
A Writer’s Notebook: Last lines
Today, I’ve written a story backward. I explained some of the reasons for this in yesterday’s post, but for more about how I went about the actual exercise, see below. When they left the theater they were already arguing. Matilda gestured with her handbag and it swung like a wrecking ball; Gerhardt waved his glovedContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Last lines”
Last lines
We writers pay a lot of attention to first lines. They’re supremely important — for the reader, they are the opening impression, the first glimpse not only at the story but also at the style of the story and even (dare I say it in this age of modern criticism) at the author. For theContinue reading “Last lines”
10 tips on writing from the Chronicle of Higher Ed
One of my professors from graduate school posted on her Facebook a link to an article, “10 Tips on How to Write Less Badly,” in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s a strange title, partly because the URL truncates the title to read “10-Tips-on-How-to-Write-Less,” which is precisely the opposite of this article’s purpose: The tipsContinue reading “10 tips on writing from the Chronicle of Higher Ed”
New fiction by David Maizenberg
A long time ago, I accidentally found an amazing little collection of short stories that felt unlike anything I’d read before–and in the best possible way. The book was Invitations to a Bridge Burning, by David Maizenberg, and they profoundly changed the way I think about fiction. I had by that time been through enoughContinue reading “New fiction by David Maizenberg”
A Writer’s Notebook: Prose haiku
Technically, this is just a very short short-short, the flashiest of flashes (to borrow a phrase from Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually), but I’ll explain below why I call it a “prose haiku.” She sat on a thick window sill outside the store and tucked into tiny chicken wings, so small they looked like friedContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Prose haiku”
New publication
A bit of news: A short while ago–the day before my birthday, in fact–I got word from Red Fez that they wanted to publish my story “Kamikaze.” Today, the issue went online. It’s also chock full of other great stories and poems, so make sure to check out the whole issue. For links to someContinue reading “New publication”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 