I recently completed several projects on Lulu.com, and overall, I am very pleased with them. The books look very good and the turn-around time is fast. They do a brilliant job of boxing your books: the packaging is very sturdy. I especially like the flexibility of their service: you can place your early orders conservatively [...]
The Lightest Touch Good poetry begins with the lightest touch, a breeze arriving from nowhere, a whispered healing arrival, a word in your ear, a settling into things, then like a hand in the dark it arrests the whole body, steeling you for revelation. In the silence that follows a great line you can feel Lazarus deep [...]
Last week, I was invited to give a talk in my daugher's a second grade class. The students were doing a unit on careers, and I was invited to talk about being an author. Here are some of their questions, and my answers: How do you prepare for your career? Get a little notebook. Start writing every day: [...]
I LOVE this excerpt on the creative process from Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Cosmic. You can read the rest ofthe interview at http://www.examiner.com/x-19497-Madison-Books-Examiner~y2010m1d24-An-interview-with-Cosmic-and-Millions-author-Frank-Cottrell-Boyce?cid=edition-rss-Madison. Thanks to Lynn Maudlin for the link. PW: The theme of what it means to be/to have a dad in Cosmic is wonderful. Did that emerge on its own, or was it [...]
Did you take Freshman Writing or First Year Composition, or some kind of writing course when you first went to college? Was it a great experience? Too easy? Too hard? Was it even clear to you what you were supposed to be getting out of that class? As I am getting ready to teach another group of [...]
A colleague called me the other day. He offered to buy me a latte if I could help him figure out what was so bad about passive voice. I met him at the coffee shop on campus. I sipped my latte and explained that passive voice does not mean that your sentence is long and dangly, lacks action, [...]
Several months ago, I wrote about my ceramic chicken, the one I use to store projects that are on hold. Sometimes I am waiting to hear from a publisher, sometimes a piece is just plain stuck, sometimes I need to gather additional materials, sometimes another deadline interrupts. Sometimes I just give up. In all of [...]
"It surprises and satisfies," declares the cover, and it turns out the cover is right. The New Writer's Handbook: A Practical Anthology of Best Advice for Your Craft and Career, Volume 2 is well worth your time. I was concerned that the short chapters and multiple authors would mean shallow content and a bumpy ride. Largely [...]
I recently had the chance to lurk during a heated debate about the use of the apostrophe-- I know, I know, that may not count as "heated" where you come from, but among some English teachers and writing coaches, these things matter more than the Super Bowl and World Series combined. I'll add another post or [...]
I participated in a panel at LOSCON called "What I Do When I Should Be Writing." The confessions included the usual: blogging, emailing, eating, shopping, channel-flipping, furniture moving. One surprise: a lot of us find that washing the dishes (really) helps when we get stuck on a writing project. Warm soapy water, a pile of [...]