“A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.”

At the heart of this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Overstory, is the question “How important are trees?” What I love about this book is the way it gives eight answers to that question by telling the stories of eight people who have only one thing in common: a … Read More

“A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing.”

Margaret Atwood continues, “The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.”  This morning, a student described how difficult writing was for her. She’s not alone.  One thing that hasn’t changed over the decades I’ve worked with students is the expectation that writing should be easier than it is. They’re surprised to … Read More