New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson wrote: Sit in a chair and write. Ignore this thing they call writer’s block. Doctor’s don’t get doctor’s block; your mechanic doesn’t get mechanic’s block. If you want to write great stories, learn to write when you don’t feel like it. You have to write it poorly before […]
Last Saturday I attended the YA Writing Conference, hosted by Changing Hands Bookstore, the best indie bookstore in the Phoenix area. It was a little different setup than other conferences I’ve attended. There were four classes available to take, and each person could sign up for three of the classes. Each class was an hour […]
Writing is like exercise. Ideally we’d all do it at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon If I wanted to run a marathon I would have to do an intense daily training regimen. But even though I’m not personally interested in running a marathon, it’ s still important […]
I first encountered what is now one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems in a class I took on memoir writing. Here’s the short, two-stanza poem: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children […]
The idea wasn’t originally mine–as is common in the writing classroom, I borrowed it from another teacher. Every semester, on the first day of class, each of my students has to complete the metaphor “Writing is Like…” I’ve now heard hundreds of metaphors, many of them involving pain and suffering–for freshmen taking a required general […]