Writing

I'm still very much in the apprentice stage of writing. I read somewhere that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing - so I'm headed that way, but I'm nowhere near there. But, for what they're worth, here are some of the things I've learned along the way.

I've a very structured and disciplined writing routine where I begin a novel in January, I write four days a week from 9 to 6, my book is due May 31st, I edit during the summer, and I publish in the fall. As I write a novel a year this has been my discipline and though it may sound restrictive and non-creative, it feels the exact opposite.  Read more

My favorite thing to remember about novel-writing is an observation I saw taped to a friend's wall in her office in graduate school: "Nobody asked you to write that novel". Therefore novel-writing is a choice--you can always stop, always keep going. You are free to do whatever you want. Most novelists come to writing novels because they have been avid readers.  Read more

When asked, Marlon James is hard-pressed to name his favorite story. It's admittedly a nearly impossible request to make of anyone, and surely more so of a novelist, whose trade relies so deeply on both intake and telling, however tangled, of tales. Unable to name just one, James improvised.  Read more

The passage of time is relentless. We all know it. Whether you're having fun or not. Whether the years are filled with sublime happiness or utter sadness, or, like most of us, with a combination of both. It just goes, and sometimes, our dreams go with it. We turn around and 10 or 20 years have whipped by and we are left to wonder what else we could have, should have, done.