A friend of mine took this photograph, one of about twenty he snapped of this grasshopper on a summer day. And one of the thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures he took over his lifetime. Just a visual example of that old joke: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. … [Read more...]
Know Thy Characters
As an editor, teacher, and writer, I always read with an eye toward learning about the writing craft. My books on writing could take flight in a strong wind, so many scraps of paper stick out of them, marking important points that I want to teach or use in my own work. The most easily accessible bookshelves in my house are filled with books that are reliable go-to sources for a beautifully crafted … [Read more...]
More Than Simple Details
I love long, lyrical descriptions in books and stories. Not necessarily Henry James, but I enjoy exact and detailed descriptions of people and places. Some readers do not. They are happy with the bare bones so they can rush on with the story. Writers vary too, some preferring to tell a reader precisely what a room, or street, or main character looks like; while other writers sketch in the … [Read more...]
What the Lion Did
The September 2012 issue of Shambhala Sun contains an intriguing article by Andrea Miller entitled “Pure Fiction.” Miller talks with three novelists, two of whom practice Zen or Buddhism. The third, although not a Buddhist, has been influenced by Buddhism. All three writers, and Miller, make interesting connections between Buddhism or Zen and fiction, but I was struck by a minor comment about plot … [Read more...]
Beginnings
I often begin my fall classes with a lesson called Beginnings. I choose opening sentences from several works of fiction and nonfiction, and then discuss with the students what we can glean about the books from those first sentences. For example, from the opening of Anne Enright’s The Gathering—“I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother’s house the summer I was eight or nine, … [Read more...]