Taking a Lesson from Moonlight
A few weeks ago, when I walked out of the theater after seeing Moonlight, I experienced a feeling akin to what I felt three days ago when I closed the cover of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time and sat back and…
Category: Rewriting
Ambushed by Beauty
The members of my writing critique group comment on my manuscript. That’s what they’re there for: to offer suggestions, to help steer me in the right direction and to give me their gut reaction to my work. Most of the…
Writers’ Original Sin: Control
We all know that exhilarating feeling of banging out a first draft when the ideas are flowing, the characters are talking and pages are filling of our their own volition as we put our vision into words. There’s no better…
Getting the replay: Composing stories that stick
I’ve spent the last few days with the same song stuck in my head. You’ve experienced this before. We’ll both experience it again.
Am I Selling Out? A Guide for the Concerned Marginalized Writer
Writing marginalized content in a mainstream world is balls. Aside from the extra pitfalls we as such authors have to look out for, aside from the extra attention and reflection and detail such writing demands, we also hit a nerve-wracking…
On Rewriting
Here’s a tip for all aspiring authors: if you can survive rewriting your work, again and again, without collapse, without quitting, you will see your work published. Rewriting is often what separates the unpublished from the published. I attended The…