
True confession? I’ve never been a porn star. I’m not even a good dancer.
Our Writing Life column archive, which features an array of guest contributors.
Perhaps a little late for the Christmas season but germane throughout the year, one may ask the question, “What is the best gift to give to a writer?”
Which is what telling stories is, if you think about it – attempting to leave behind something that wasn’t there before. Arranging words in the order in which they belong, even before you knew that these words, in this order, existed.
Show and tell is theater. As writers, we can’t help but love it. Like children, we harbor indeterminate, odd wonders. The idea that slips inside a pocket. The fringe of inspiration. We collect words like talismans – tessellation, shambolic, caducity – and cup them in our palms.
After I finished my first novel, I had several lengthy, insightful conversations with Oprah Winfrey. Our dialogue was the stuff of legends – and it took place entirely in my head.
Blame what you will: Changing seasons, the start of the school year for my son, an influx of income-generating writing projects, but several projects I impulsively began over the summer remain in the In-Progress folder on my computer desktop.
You’re seated at a large table with a delegation of professors and several classmates. The smell of old books, of the once finely polished furniture, and the faded tapestry rug tinges your nose. You wonder why they would choose such a poorly lit room to have you read in…
At a playground near my apartment in Boston, my children on side-by-side swings, their mother, my ex-wife, pushing our daughter while our son pumps his legs until he is higher than he intended. He asks for help slowing down, then stopping. I catch his legs and hold him steady. He laughs. Let go, he tells…
I was raised on magic. My father always had a book at hand. I grew up with words as close as blankets, as nutritious as carrots or spinach or milk. They were necessary things, inviolate.