I am working through plotting issues myself and returned to these notes from a master class I taught on narrative endings a couple years ago. They are just my …
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Meg's Posts
No Social Distancing Required for Fictional Friends
No Social Distancing Required for Fictional Friends Like many now, I'm social distancing. The good news for me is that a writer in these circumstances can …
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A new book by Madeleine l’Engle: Stories found in her “Tower”
The two books that made me dream of becoming a writer were Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. So the news I read this …
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On the 75th Anniversary of D-Day
It’s a rainy evening in Paris, just minutes before the hour, 75 years ago, that D-Day began. At midnight, RAF aircraft dropped hundreds of dummy paratroopers …
The Lowly Pencil
Pencil, from the Latin penicillus, meaning "little tail." Little tail? Not everyone writes even occasionally with the old fashioned yellow pencil with pink …
A Hemingway Story that Started 100 Years Ago Today
On this day 100 years ago, 18-year-old Ernest Hemingway (yes, that guy) was distributing chocolate and cigarettes to soldiers at the Italian front when a shell …
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5 Quotes from Philip Roth on Reading, Writing, and Life
I was saddened to hear the news last night that Philip Roth has died. Here are a few of the wisdoms I learned from reading his books: On reading: "Everybody …
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Words of Wisdom from Martha Gellhorn
Last year I started an effort to share a quote a day, each from a woman writer I admired. Let's just say it was a rough year, and life intervened as it …
John Steinbeck Support for NANOWRIMO
This won't be an all-Steinbeck-all-the-time month, but I did find another bit of useful advice in that The Paris Review piece--especially apt for cranking out …
Writing Advice from Ernest Hemingway on the Anniversary of For Whom the Bell Tolls
Today marks the anniversary of the publication in 1940 of my personal favorite Hemingway novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Coincidentally, tomorrow marks the …
