For so many of us, it was the way books made us feel when we were kids that made us want to write them when we grew up. The plots of those early, formative books…well, the fact is, we probably don’t remember a whole lot about them at this point. Regardless, we remember those feelings of wonder, of connection–moments when … Read More
Is Fiction Escapist?
Recently, I’ve been reading The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, by Jonathan Gottschall—an excellent companion to the work of Lisa Cron, on the evolutionary role of storytelling and its centrality to human consciousness and culture. In the course of Gottschall’s argument that fictional stories are in fact essential to our learning and development as a species, he first dismisses the … Read More
Small Changes > Big Goals
If you’re like me, you have some big goals, and you’ve had them for years. One of mine has been to read 52 books in a year. Every year, it seems, I resolve to make this happen during the first week of the new year–and every year I fall short. Pictured here, you’ll see what my husband calls my Pile … Read More
What’s your cup of tea?
If you’ve been writing for a while, you’ve probably gotten to the point where you treat your writing like work, whether or not anyone is actually paying you for it–and that in many ways is the mark of a professional. But creative writing really is NOT like other forms of work, and at this time of year–which in so many … Read More
