I loved Roger Ebert’s wit and lack of pretention. His movie reviews in The Chicago Sun-Times often struck a delicate balance between honesty and generosity. He had a great sense of film history and he’d contextualize Hollywood stinkers in ways that made them interesting as artifacts of a silly and unforgiving industry. Over time, I… Continue reading Don’t Weep for the Oompa Loompas
Category: Writing
Fiction Writing: the Private Course
Assessing interest: I’m thinking of starting another 5-week fiction writing and publishing tutorial for individual students. And if I get a lot of interest like last year, I might put together some small group workshops as well. Over the last 2 years, I’ve taught 12 students. That’s not a lot when you think of large… Continue reading Fiction Writing: the Private Course
Dirty Realist Protests Too Much
Read my latest on Splice Today, a response to Alex Perez's piece on the not-so-lost art of "dirty realism": https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/dirty-realist-protests-too-much
Dominance and Submissions
Let's say you've labored long in the fields of creative writing and the People Who Know (or maybe just the people who've noticed) have appreciated your talent. Some have appreciated it loudly and publicly, some quietly to friends in ways that eventually come back to you, some through amazing feats of jealousy, and others through… Continue reading Dominance and Submissions
Mapping the Swamp
Today, I think I overcame my hitherto impassable mental block, the one I always get between pages 50 and 70, that indicates I've hit the "swampy middle." The term "great swampy middle" wasn't invented by me. In fact, I have no desire to discover who first coined the term because I have no desire to… Continue reading Mapping the Swamp
Writing Exercise: A Noir Opening Scene in Close Third
Twenty years ago, she might have lit a cigarette. That would have been better. Twenty years and people still didn’t know what to do with their hands. Now they looked at each other and waited. “I love him. Is that what you want to hear?” “I don’t really care about that, Mrs. Sorrel. Not what… Continue reading Writing Exercise: A Noir Opening Scene in Close Third
The Inner Work of Being a Writer
The transition from dilettante to serious artist is always indistinct. As with any art form, one becomes what one does. One becomes a writer by saying, “I’m a writer” and then writing. I suppose one becomes “serious” after demonstrating or announcing one’s seriousness at some later date. But isn’t it a little absurd to say,… Continue reading The Inner Work of Being a Writer
A Little Good News Goes a Long Way
My story, "Ashes of the Trumpocene," just got nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. It came out in The Nonconformist a few months ago. That's a nice thing. https://nonconformist-mag.com/the-ashes-of-the-trumpocene/
The Ashes of the Trumpocene
A new story published in The Nonconformist Magazine. Read it here: https://nonconformist-mag.com/the-ashes-of-the-trumpocene/
538 Words About Dreams and a Lighthouse
(Part of a long story in progress.) It was around this time that the dreams began. Looking back, it seems remarkable that they hadn’t begun sooner in all of us. But, even if they had, we probably wouldn’t have known. We wouldn’t have talked about it. Tyler would have belched and blamed the beer or… Continue reading 538 Words About Dreams and a Lighthouse
The Writing Expedition 