"Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." — Stephen King
August 3, 2022
As a fan of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, I was unaware of the role that Burns’ wife played with the development of his songs until I toured the home that he lived in at the time of his death in 1796. Jean, who by all accounts … Read More
July 19, 2022
Picture this: in the 1700s, a poet from Scotland united his fellow countrymen by showing them how to respond to the rich and powerful. He recommended laughter. Meet Robert Burns – known as the “ploughman poet” – who grew up doing backbreaking field work during the day … Read More
July 14, 2022
The New York Times uses “spare” and “charming” to describe this memoir about growing up on a Wisconsin farm during the Great Depression. I would add “remarkable” to this list. When she was six years old, the children at her school contributed their pennies to buy a … Read More
June 30, 2022
The great poet Henry Taylor must have been in a cranky mood when he compiled this collection of 100 poems that span his 50-year career. Taylor chose not to follow the convention of inviting a respected peer to write an introduction; he selected a cover that makes … Read More
June 17, 2022
The poet Mary Oliver continues: “It is, hopefully, true.” She argues that interruptions and schedules and errands are the enemies of creative work. I’ve been thinking a lot about the level of concentration that writing require. I’m working with writers this summer who, in many cases, haven’t … Read More
June 10, 2022
Some of the people who attend my memoir workshops come to write their family history, others want to write memorable stories, and yet others want to discover meaningful answers to their questions about “life.” This book, written by a psychotherapist, is for this third group of … Read More
May 27, 2022
Virginia Woolf argues that life is not comprised of an orderly series of events, but rather, life is complex and spiritual in nature. Therefore, when writing about life, novelists should “. . . convey this varying, unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display … Read More
May 20, 2022
How many Pulitzer-Prize winning poets write about happiness? I can think of only one, Henry Taylor, who is considered by some critics to be “deliberately, determinedly unfashionable.” Why? Perhaps it is because his “technically well-ordered style and leisurely reflections of life” (which are comparable to Robert Frost’s … Read More
May 9, 2022
In Rewrite Your Life: Discover Your Truth Through the Healing Power of Fiction, Jessica Lourey cites academic research that found that people who write fiction can experience more physical health benefits than people who write autobiography. In my college classes, I’ve found that asking students to … Read More
April 22, 2022
Every book, story, and poem, Annie Dillard says, presents challenges, “which the writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.” That’s when the real work begins. Can it be done? Can the writer engage our intellects and our hearts? Why are we reading, Dillard asks, “if … Read More
April 8, 2022
What do you think a story about a thorny family would include? If it’s by Anne Tyler, and if it covers a period of sixty years, you can expect to see that things don’t always work out. For example, the central character, named Mercy, does not have … Read More
March 23, 2022
In a 1978 BBC radio program, Barbara Pym said, “Perhaps I’ve been influenced by something I was once told about Proust – that he was said to go over all his characters and make them worse.” I laughed when I heard this because Pym does have … Read More
March 10, 2022
Here’s a radical idea: The primary responsibility of teachers and leaders is not to issue orders; it’s to release the energy of the people and manage the processes for using that energy to achieve goals. This idea was ahead of its time when Malcolm Knowles published it … Read More
March 3, 2022
Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, describes writers like me when he says that when we’re not writing, we are often doubting ourselves. We feel bad. Instead, we could think of this period of delay as something constructive. We could reframe it … Read More
