I read Tim O'Brien's amazing short story, "The Things They Carried" in the first writing class I took. I've read it many times since, but I wouldn't need to …
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writing tips
Mark Twain on "Damn"
Think how much easier this writing advice is to execute in the days of word processing global changes: "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write …
Rules for Writers (from Some Amazing Ones)
I just came across the most wonderful "Rules for Writing" series at the guardian.co.uk site, thanks to a mention of it in yesterday's NYTBR's "Inside the List". …
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"The Ghost within Every Experience"
From Mark Strand's "On Becoming a Poet" in The Making of a Poem, an idea for what a poem may be, which I think also applies to fiction: "A poem may be ... the …
If You Tell the Truth
Stumbled across this Mark Twain quote as I'm going through revisions to a new novel I hope to get to my editor tomorrow: "If you tell the truth, you don't have …
Ink on the Rejection Slip
A passage that ought to give all struggling writers hope, from Booker-prize winner Graham Swift's Making an Elephant. He's talking about the time before he'd …
2,000 Words or 2:00, and Writing Friends
The history of my writing starts with a little brown lunch bag. Like the character of Linda in my novel, The Wednesday Sisters, my first writing teacher—at a …
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