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Music to write by
Everyone has their favorites, but I prefer music that stays in the background. Soundtracks can be excellent, because they are composed to play under the action. If you are working in a reflective mood,...
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Quick! Ten books that you can’t forget
The idea is to write down ten titles fast, without thinking much about it. Here are my ten, in no particular order: Turtle Diary Something Wicked This Way Comes Dandelion Wine King of the Wind A Golden...
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Circling back
As I work on the story cycle involving Green Town (an homage to Ray Bradbury, there), I am finding myself drawn to writers and books I liked when I was young. Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Marguerite...
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My review policy
Writing a book is hard. If anyone doubts this, try it. Never mind questions of quality. It is enormously difficult to achieve even ugliness, especially at the beginning. The ones who persist in their...
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Quote of the week: Thornton Wilder
Art is confession. Art is the secret told. . . . And the secret is nothing more than the whole drama of the inner life. —Thornton Wilder, playwright, 1928Filed under: Quotations Tagged: creativity,...
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The humblebrag
We’ve all seen these. They go something like this: “Just sold my 100,000th book; feeling blessed and so grateful to my wonderful readers.” “Planning our dream vacation; so grateful for that big...
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The way stories are true . . . and the way reality is
The fine New York writer Nancy Willard once described something fictional as “being true, the way stories are true.” That is a great observation. Fiction can take you on a trip that feels emotionally,...
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Local heroes
“I know these woods.” Robin Hood, in Robin and Marian I know something of rural New York, which makes me biased toward regional writers who set their stories there. I know those woods. Place matters....
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From Screen to Print: The Room/The Disaster Artist
The Room On November 1, 2014, in Chicago, I saw The Room, a 2003 film that will make you cry with laughter, though it was not meant to be funny. It is a $6 million folly. Tommy Wiseau is the writer,...
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New Release: In the Shadows of the Onion Domes by Mary Pat Hyland
Mary Pat Hyland has written six novels set in one of my favorite places: upstate New York. Her newest book is IN THE SHADOWS OF THE ONION DOMES. This collection of stories features characters who live...
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