Writing

Some writers won't read a word of any novel while they're writing their own. Not one word. They don't even want to see the cover of a novel. As they write, the world of fiction dies: no one has ever written, no one is writing, no one will ever write again.  Read more

What is falling action? This is a question I ask myself about once a year. Why do I ponder falling action so regularly? Well, I teach junior high English, and nowhere does falling action have more importance than in the middle school English class. That's because falling action is part of Freytag's Model, the story pyramid, a standard structure that teachers use to introduce plot structure.  Read more

For a long time, I believed that my only hope of becoming a professional writer was to find the perfect tool. A few months into my career as a book critic, I'd already run up against the limits of my productivity, and, like many others before me, I pinned the blame on Microsoft Word.  Read more

To think about Joan Didion, you have to confront two things before you get to the words: the pictures and the anecdotes. If you're interested in certain aspects of the culture - American counterculture in the 1960s, California, female writers - the pictures are familiar, if not ingrained.  Read more

There are wonderful stories in publishing, but the story of Douglas Stuart is pure magic. And with Young Mungo (Grove, Apr. 2022), the follow-up to his 2020 Booker Prize-winning debut novel, Shuggie Bain, more magic is all but guaranteed.