Fireside Stories
Twenty years ago, I moved to Boston, not because I had any plans but because a friend did and I didn’t have anything better to do. When she asked me if I’d like to come along for the ride, I…
Category: The Writing Life
Cliché as landmine: Use the unoriginal to inspire better edits
Editing your novel manuscript can be a painful, embarrassing process. For me, one of the many humbling things I find in a stack of freshly drafted pages is how often I’ve been entirely unoriginal. During the first pass of anything,…
Ordinary Time
“First Sunday in Ordinary Time…” Saturday evening. Five-o’clock mass. I am eight. Squished into a pew between one of my brothers and my mother. Half-listening to the priest while I watch the last of the slush drop off the rubber…
Hearing Voices
I’m sure you’ve all heard the advice to put your manuscript in a drawer for a few months before tackling the next revision. Getting some distance allows you to see things you otherwise can’t because you’re too close to it….
Friday Feast: To Motivate and To Finish
Earlier this week, I yelled out loud to my empty living room, “I hate everything that I’ve written!” Yesterday, I broke out some junior high dance moves to celebrate the completion of another first (shitty) draft. Such is the up-down life of…
How Nothing Helped My Writing
I have difficulty sitting, a condition I treat with an ever-present pillow and an unusual form of therapy — one I find instructive as a writer. I practice doing nothing. I was turned onto this ‘nothing’ therapy by Dr. David…