As our country descends deeper and deeper into the almost Manichean split between the left and the right, a writer has to ask himself how his own background affects his political outlook and, inevitably, his writing. And what he should do or say about that.
A number of years ago in a fiction writing workshop, a student turned in the early chapters of a novel she’d been working on for some time. The writing was so good that when the class ended I asked her if I could see more of it. After reading it, I ventured an opinion that …
My friend Nancy Lord has long considered herself the Queen of All Writing Retreats, and for good reason. Although I don’t have the actual number right here in front of me, I believe that Nancy has enjoyed the hospitality of various writers’ colonies, enclaves and hideaways in all fifty states, a few American protectorates, several …
Last week, in my blog titled “Will You Read My Manuscript For Me?” I encouraged writers to both give advice freely and to receive it with an open mind. It seemed like a generous and well-intended thing to write about. Today, one week after posting that I got an e-mail from a national magazine informing …
Recently, at the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, when the facilitator of a panel I was sitting on, my friend Nancy Lord, introduced me to the audience, she added (only half joking), “Rich is a bit of a contrarian.” Of course, I responded, “Am not!”
I feel like a lucky guy, I really do. As a writer, I have little ambition to do anything beyond writing as well as I possibly can each time I sit down at the keyboard, and yet, somehow, rather miraculously, I now have two hardbound books to my name. Neither of them were my idea: …
OK, I am not making this up: one minute ago, today July 16, at about 10:15 AM, I climbed into my comfortable writing chair, here in my dorm room at UAA intending to write this week’s blog on the subject of giving advice to newer writers who ask me to read there work. I had …
Man, I have to say I was really startled by Andromeda’s announcement that she is about to enter the Low Residency MFA program at Antioch. Andromeda Romano Lax is everything that most of the writing students I’ve taught say they are striving to become: a skilled, published and respected writer; a serious writer who got …
I have never blogged before, so forgive me if I’m not good at this. (I sound like an innocent farm boy on his first trip to the brothel. Promise not to laugh at me, please!) Bill Sherwonit’s recent post discussed what seems obvious to everyone around him: the fact that nobody wants to be called a nature …