In the 30th Anniversary Edition of this classic book on writing nonfiction, William Zinsser describes how his priorities have evolved over the decades. Known as an advocate for clear, “uncluttered” writing, in his later years, he grew to value “humanity and warmth” even more. As every writing teacher would … Read More
Author: Kate Stover
“A black dream weighs upon me like lead, / For my foreordained death is approaching, / and great wars and great fires lie ahead.”
The great Russian poet Alexander Block wrote these words in 1902, when he was 22 years old. It seemed as if he knew that in less than 20 years, he would die of heart failure brought on by malnutrition. He lived through Russian revolutions in 1905 and 1917; he … Read More
“Get your intention clear before you start and tell your story with integrity.”
“You don’t have to rely on reason.”
More than 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said that logical arguments are always less effective than moving stories. So, if you want to persuade someone to do something, appeal to their heart, not to their brain. I thought of this when reading this book. Brewer argues that if you want to … Read More
“I said O let us not go.”
“It’s the kind of room that makes me hate the world.”
What an experiment — a novel with no plot, about a woman whose name we don’t know, set in an unidentified location. It’s a collection of descriptions of how the protagonist responds to her surroundings. NPR compared the book to “slow cooking” that requires patience. The New York Times… Read More
“But then Shakespeare had a thought: What if a character had a conversation – with himself.”
Before Shakespeare invented the soliloquy, actors spoke in monologues and dialogues. Soliloquys are a radical combination of the uninterrupted speech of one person (in monologues) with the tension created by expressing two different perspectives (in dialogues). Soliloquys demonstrate how a character can go back and forth when weighing both sides … Read More
“I began to think that some of us are the designated rememberers.”
I always begin my “How to Write Your Memoirs” classes by asking, “Why do you want to do this?” No one has ever answered the question like novelist Pat Conroy does in this collection of essays about writing memoirs. Conroy said that he was surprised that when he talked with … Read More
“She felt that surely she hadn’t done every single thing wrong.”
Of course, this character – Astrid – had not done every single thing wrong. But, after watching someone she had known for 40 years get hit by a bus (literally), she suddenly faced the fact that she had made plenty of mistakes and had done things she had regretted. So … Read More
“Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”
What makes this book a bestseller? Clearly, the sad “if only I had…..” theme of the book resonates with many people during a year when mental health issues are skyrocketing. Perhaps more importantly, the novel is written by someone who has lived the experience he is writing about. The … Read More
“I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened.”
I nearly fell off my chair when I read this statement in Stephen King’s book On Writing. It provides such a sharp contrast to the 20 other books I’ve been reading on the subject of writing memoirs. Because I’m working on my own book on this subject, I’ve been … Read More
“Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear.”
We’re in the middle of the summer, and I’m still in the process of “righting the ship.” After feeling off-balance for a year, I am turning once again to my wise friend, Parker Palmer. This is the book that I chose for my first blog post in 2013, and … Read More
“Black children continue to be unconsciously trained to correlate blackness with wrongness and whiteness with rightness.”
Let’s start with this idea: linguists do not designate any language as being superior. And yet, when I teach my students to write academic essays in “standard” English, I am in fact telling them what language I believe is superior. Baker-Bell argues that “standard” English is a construct created by … Read More
“Resistance is not about laziness, lack of will power, or the failure of intellect and imagination.”
Instead, it’s about neurology and psychology, Rosanne Bane argues in her book about the resistance that nearly all writers experience at some point. She explains what happens in our brains when we have trouble writing. As a writing teacher, I have been experimenting with ways to support the writing process … Read More
“It seemed to me that if I could stir, if I could move to take the next step, I could go out into the poem the way I could go out into that snow.”
Were my reading assignments interesting? Moving? Inspiring? These are the questions I ask myself after teaching literature classes. I hope my students will experience the sort of engagement that Eudora Welty describes here. She writes about spending an afternoon in the library reading Yeats and feeling so absorbed by the … Read More