In junior high, I kept a diary. Diligently, every night before bed, I recorded my day, from what happened first to what happened last, and included the relevant people and places.

I remember something peculiar about this ritual. While writing (perhaps about the potato side dish my mom prepared to accompany the roasted chicken), I felt…uneasy, dissatisfied. Bored out of my freaking mind. In fact, the diary could have won an award for the most BORING writing ever committed to paper. What I resisted including in my bland log—and yet, what would have added the necessary spice—was conflict. [Read more…] about When Geometry Proves Useful and Sexy

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his preface to The Marble Faun, directly addresses the audience—calls the reader “indulgent,” “gentle,” “kind.” I rather like wading through Hawthorne’s prose and finding myself so respectfully and hopefully described. Can you hear the plea in his choice of words? It is as if he were begging, “Go easy on me, reader. I’m about to pour my heart out.”

After you have finished writing something, you, too, will long for a gentle reader. You might confront this completed something, whatever it is (poem, story, play, essay), much in the same way that a new parent gazes upon an infant. “Why, look what I made. How remarkable. Wonderful!” And then, with consternation: “But so vulnerable.”

Alas, the world is a cold, cruel place. (Sorry, but it’s true.) You will send your precious masterpiece out into the wilderness with a basket crammed chock-full of your hopes and dreams. And though your darling might fall into the hands of a gentle, indulgent, kind grandmotherly sort, it more likely will bump into a vicious wolf (who works as a fiction editor for a literary magazine and delights in issuing speedy rejections. His den harbors whole piles of shards and rubble—the jagged remains of hapless submitters’ crushed egos.) [Read more…] about Writing Pals

The best writers are enchantresses. Their books bewitch us. But how do they cast their magic? This is the question that lingers after I finish a superb novel, and I’ll research the writer to try to answer it, delving into those sources readily available on the internet—reviews, biographies, interviews. I especially enjoy reading the interviews and getting the inside scoop on the author’s life, like the time of day she writes, the snacks she eats, the books she calls her favorites. I relish these details. The admissions of rituals and preferences compel me, as if such minutiae were the stuff of alchemy.

There is one interview question, however, that frequently and obviously rubs authors the wrong way: “Where do you get your ideas?” And honestly, the most common retort rubs me the wrong way: “I go to the idea store and buy a good one.” It’s blatantly snarky (and sadly unoriginal. Writers grumble this all the time. They must also visit the cliché store).

Maybe the sarcasm is a way to hide uncertainty and fear, for the truth is, probably few writers know exactly where they get their ideas. The ideas seem to beget themselves. (And—eek—what if they stop spontaneously reproducing?)

This is true for me, too, of course. Sometimes I’ll read over a story that I’ve recently drafted and find myself scratching my head and asking, “Where did this come from?”
So though I wish I could divulge the secret source from which powerful ideas spring, I’m not sure what that source is. But I do have an inkling of where intriguing ideas lurk, and I want to share a few of these nooks, crevices, and dark corners with you. [Read more…] about January 2018