“When I wrote my book ‘On Writing Well,’ I had a definite model in mind. . . it was Alec Wilder’s book about music.”

June 30, 2023

A veteran of WWII, William Zinsser was one of the first to give American writers advice that might be described as “touchy-feely.” In his classic On Writing Well, he says that he is most “interested in the intangibles that produce good writing – confidence, enjoyment, … Read More

“Many years before, Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side.”

June 22, 2023

We are 500 pages into the story when this observation about the ideal structure for stories appears: “Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities….but at some untold … Read More

“Twelve years after Robin’s death, no one knew any more about how he had ended up hanged from a tree in his own yard than they had on the day it happened.”

June 13, 2023

Even though I am not normally drawn to murder mysteries, I read this novel because Donna Tartt demonstrates how a writer can successfully break the rules. None of her characters are likeable; instead, they are suffering, or damaged, or limited, or all three. The plot does not … Read More

“I am going to write about all this one day, I told her, and she smiled at me.”

May 30, 2023

This is the final sentence of Hua Hsu’s memoir. He is thanking his therapist for helping him deal with the death of his best friend. I imagine his therapist smiled because she knew that writing a memoir based on trauma is difficult. In fact, Hsu spent … Read More

“Even as I write these words I am planning to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

May 23, 2023

We all know the feeling of being torn between wanting to take the time to think deeply and needing to get up to get something done. The tension between lofty ideas and everyday practicalities is a theme that runs through many of the works in this collection. … Read More

“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice –”

May 16, 2023

Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” continues, “though the whole house / began to tremble / and you felt the old tug / at your ankles . . .” The journey she describes didn’t stop, even though it was “a wild night.” The stars began “to burn … Read More

“Remember: Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance . . .”

April 27, 2023

William Zinsser continues, “. . .not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.” Zinsser reminds us that readers don’t want to be impressed by your accomplishments. They don’t want to see whining, anger, or revenge. … Read More

“I can allow myself to speculate on all that now, though it would not have occurred to me to do so at the time.”

April 20, 2023

When writing about something that happened years ago, should you stick to the story, or should you interject speculations about what could have happened? Should you also comment on your speculations? People who write stories about things that happened to them regularly consider these questions. Pulitzer Prize … Read More

“Go north a dozen years on a road overgrown with vines to find the days after you were born.”

April 13, 2023

This remarkable first line of the poem “Sight” by Faith Shearin does three things: it provides a way to visualize a journey back in time along “a road overgrown with vines.” It includes an interesting slant rhyme with “vines” and “find.” And, it’s written as a command, … Read More

“One goes on living in the hopes of seeing another spring,” Daphne said with a rush of emotion.

March 30, 2023

When the London Review of Books called Barbara Pym “a brilliant comic writer,” they had scenes like this in mind. Here’s how Pym does it: First, emotion is expressed – not by someone beautiful and in love, but by Daphne, the lonely older sister of the … Read More

“His job wasn’t to recreate reality, but to immerse viewers in a kind of dream.”

March 26, 2023

When writing stories, the most important thing is to tell everything that happened, right? Well, maybe not. Hart argues that the author’s goal is not to describe the world in all its complexity.  Rather, consider the advice offered by David Lean, director of Lawrence of Arabia. He … Read More

“So I decided to fashion a special kind of collage.”

March 21, 2023

How would a dissident playwright, who spent five years in prison before becoming the first president of Czechoslovakia, construct a memoir? If you imagine a creative architecture not seen before, you are right. It’s an engaging mix of observations, flashbacks, interviews, commentary, and memos to his staff … Read More

“Kafka attended courses on the History of German Art, History of Architecture, History of Dutch Painting, and History of Christian Sculpture.”

February 26, 2023

Anne Tyler, John Updike, and Flannery O’Connor all made paintings and sketches in addition to writing fiction. As it turns out, so did Franz Kafka, who had a strong interest in art from his teens to his untimely death at age 40. What can you learn from … Read More

“Everything was pulled tight as a snare drum, so expertly smoothed that you could easily spot the century’s worth of patched holes and tears.”

February 16, 2023

Perhaps nobody is surprised that the British and the American reviewers of Spare by Prince Harry see things differently.  For example, the New Yorker describes Harry’s mended bedding in Balmoral Castle as “a metaphor for the constricting, and quite possibly threadbare, fabric of the institution of monarchy” … Read More

“There was the teasing and impossible desire to imitate the petty pride of sparrows wallowing and flouncing in the red dust of country roads.”

January 31, 2023

Richard Wright, who was born in 1908, describes the “brace of mountainlike, spotted, black-and-white horses clopping down a dusty road through clouds of powdered clay” in his memoir Black Boy. He finds beauty in the “green leaves rustling with a rainlike sound” and in identifying … Read More