August 28, 2019
Prompt Me
On my writing desk sits a glass jar filled with folded slips of paper, each strip bearing a phrase taken from a poem that’s meant to serve as writing inspiration. […]
July 25, 2019
Writer Identify Crisis
In an email to my writing friends, I admitted that sometimes I don’t feel like a writer anymore, that I’m slacking off and not doing any actual work. I said […]
October 30, 2018
Drafts, Part II: Rewrites, Deleted Scenes & Orphans
In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about my long road of novel revision and some of the reactions I received regarding just how extensive the process has been. […]
October 27, 2018
Drafts, Part I: Revision Resistance
On October 20 I attended Cleveland Drafts, a daylong literary festival that snaked its way through a bookstore, a gallery, and three bars in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood. The event was […]
September 3, 2018
Writing Is Thinking
Years ago, one of my writing acquaintances (we’ll call her B.) was working on her first novel when she received a suggestion from her instructor to be more specific about […]
June 22, 2018
The Hard Part
In recent months, I’ve lost some weight. This isn’t something I ever planned to write about on this blog, but lately it’s been on my mind whenever I sit down […]
April 9, 2018
You Can Make It Better
At my recent stay at Yaddo, I found myself reading about kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold lacquer. Once a piece is mended this way, the resulting golden […]
September 28, 2017
Under the Surface
My maternal grandfather was a coal miner. The job killed him, or at least I once believed it did based on the shaky family lore I heard as a child. […]
August 25, 2017
Going Blind During the Total Eclipse
In the days leading up to the solar eclipse, I carried around Blindness by José Saramago. Whenever anyone asked me about it, I detailed the novel’s premise surrounding an unexplained epidemic of […]
July 18, 2017
Dispatches from the Literary Life
Because it’s summer and it’s slow, and maybe because it just rained here for three days straight and all I want to do right now is go back to reading Made […]