by Cherie Tucker
February 2015
We all use whoever and whomever when we don’t know who did something or whom we’re talking about, but sometimes we don’t know which one is right. Just last week I saw two wrong whomevers in the paper’s “RANT & RAVE” section.
Read Moreby Richard Cass
February 2015
Like all people who love their work, I seek to establish an integrity in it, to make what I love to do and what I have to do one and the same. And like all superstitious beings, I need amulets – objects of power – to add magic to whatever conscious effort and thought can make possible. The largest of these charms is the writing desk I brought home from Oregon, built from red madrona wood. It is the field for the other things that carry me to work.
Read Moreby Lisa Brunette
February 2015
I was standing there under the fluorescent lights, sniffling a bit from the inherent and persistent dust hanging in the air, and I saw it: the desk of my dreams. It was a hulking mass of heavy wood, sturdy as the hospital from whence it came. Built in the 1940s, this desk was as fat as a Volkswagon bug, with a file platform that slid out and then accordioned upward on a huge, spring-loaded metal arm.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
February 2015
I’ve never given a lot of thought to the ol’ show, don’t tell directive in writing because I thought it was easily grasped. Instead of saying “She was sad,” I should describe my character staring out the window with tears in her eyes. Instead of writing “The dog was frantic,” the dog could be shown running in circles barking. But recently, my sixteen year-old son put another spin on it.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
January 2015
Some time ago we talked about making lists. You know that every A. must have a B., and every 1. must have a 2., and that you can NEVER have a single bullet – there must always be a second one. We established that.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
January 2015
Recently, I had a second opportunity to watch the Oscar-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire. For the first twenty minutes I questioned whether I’d paid any attention at all during the first viewing. It seemed my memory had been erased of all the difficult, dark parts; all I’d been left with was the good feeling at the end.
Read Moreby Nancy Creager
January 2015
She was my first Creative Writing Teacher. At that time it was called Composition. I was ten.
As she entered the classroom, I noticed her face, pale and unsmiling. She carried a briefcase. It was black, plain, large – in clear disproportion to her five-foot frame. She bent slightly to the right under its weight.
Read Moreby S.E. Batt
January 2015
Writers know that the golden rule of writing is to write. Stories don’t write themselves onto paper, so actual writing is the only way to become a writer. There is the sister advice that tags along, however, and her name is Read Books.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
December 2014
A couple of years ago we talked about outlines, and the main thing you were to remember was that you had to have two points to subdivide anything. For every 1 there must be a 2, and for every A there must be a B. Everyone should know that, but I’m discovering that apparently the message didn’t get around much, so here we go again.
Read Moreby Heather Siegel
December 2014
Teach yourself how to write. When you are fourteen years old, buy a black and white composition notebook, using your busgirl tips from Bob’s Luncheonette where you work on Saturdays, desperate to earn money and get out from under the absurd life you are living in the basement of your grandparents’ house in Bellmore, Long Island.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
December 2014
In autoimmune disorders, the immune system gets confused and attacks things within the body’s own system. The white blood cells produce antibodies against the body’s tissues – basically, attacking their home. What should be treated as a friend is misidentified as an enemy.
Read Moreby K. E. MacLeod
November 2014
He suspects people do not think as well of him as they once had. Or perhaps they never did, and he is just realizing it now. Or perhaps he is heading for a delusional state from which the only exit is the fog of medication. And, of course, by then it will be verifiably true that people don’t think of him as they once had.
Read Moreby Ingrid Schaffenburg
November 2014
We all experience times when our writing just isn’t flowing, when it becomes a real effort just to put a coherent sentence together, and we fear we’ve lost our mojo. At times like this we begin to wonder if we’ll ever hit that zone again.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
November 2014
We often reassure each other that nothing’s perfect. There’s supposed to be some sort of comfort in that, a bit of release from the trap of striving for the unachievable or judging what we have as not good enough. It’s supposed to, I think, help us accept the “eh” aspect—the aspect of our experience that’s not quite what we want.
Read Moreby Joan Frank
November 2014
A year ago I drove to a pretty town up north, to speak to a group of seniors. Their association's monthly event featured a catered lunch, door prizes, and an author as speaker: this time, me.
They were mostly widows, some quite old—reminding me, depressingly, of the accuracy of actuarial tables. Some appeared vibrant and fit, curious, mischievous. (These latter, I sensed, were the ones who'd live longest.) Others seemed vague and infirm; still others indifferent and glum.
Read Moreby Joan Frank
October 2014
We all tune in, almost around the clock, to the aural avalanche.
Advisories, instruction, rules. Pointers, scoldings, sermons. Warnings, prayers. Parables. Jokes.
They seem to spawn: articles and essays about how to write, what to write, when and where to write, for whom, even why to write.
Read Moreby Bari Benjamin
October 2014
As far back as I can remember when I learned to read and write, I longed to see my words on the printed page. My mother was an artist, an oil painter, so there were no coloring books for me. “Create your own pictures,” she would say, as she handed me bright, white sheets of paper and thick crayons. When I could write, she would say, “Tell your own stories.”
Read Moreby Bari Benjamin
October 2014
As far back as I can remember when I learned to read and write, I longed to see my words on the printed page. My mother was an artist, an oil painter, so there were no coloring books for me. “Create your own pictures,” she would say, as she handed me bright, white sheets of paper with thick crayons. When I could write, she would say, “Tell your own stories.”
Read Moreby Ingrid Schaffenburg
October 2014
As you can probably tell from last month’s post, I’m a huge advocate of following your dreams. Don’t know why I’m so passionate about it except for the fact that my parents were artists and they set a pretty good example for me that you could indeed make a living by following your passion. Which is probably why I ran kicking and screaming from every desk/corporate/uninspiring job I ever had.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
October 2014
Around the age of eight I had a dream in which I am captured and brought to a large indoor swimming pool filled with oil - where I am to be boiled alive. That's a nightmare. But what really makes a nightmare a nightmare? Surprisingly it’s not the threat of being boiled, shot, hung, hunted, or eaten; it's the sense of being unable to change the situation, of having no power.
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