In the Write

I’m working with a couple of aspiring writers, editing their first attempts at young adult fiction.  Both are thoughtful, bright, clever people.  Both have teaching experience and/or kids at the grade levels their work is aiming toward.  Both would be fine dinner party guests; both could carry a conversation with wit and style.  However, both have […]

Or more like you have a need to write?  That’s a very good thing; it means (1) you’re not dead, and (2) you have something to say.  About the world.  About the people in it. About your place in it.  Most people don’t feel a need to express themselves or to examine their own lives […]

I’ve been remiss on the blog but for  good reason:  I’m a reader for a national literary contest.  I won’t name competition herewith, as work is ongoing.  And I truly mean ongoing.   I have 275 novels to read over the course of 4 months.  Nearly every day the courier comes with another box.  These […]

There’s nothing juvenile about the Prairie View School–at least from the outside.  Its an old State Hospital–built in the 1930’s is my guess–set on a hilltop on the outskirts of Waseca, a farming town in southwestern Minnesota.  Foreboding on the outside with heavy roofline brows and stone sides, wire-meshed windows and fenced passage ways between […]

Last night I had the pleasure of listening to a fine poetry reading by Natasha Tretheway, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2007 for her book Native Guard.   She was up in Minnesota as part of the Northwoods Writers Conference, held by the lake on the campus of Bemidji State University. Born […]

A recent national report bemoaned the lack of male teachers in the lower grades: only nine percent of elementary teachers are male, which is a 40 year low. While the percentages go up in middle and high school, children in grades K-12 are far more likely encounter women teachers than men. This disparity has various […]

1.  Don’t Do It The whole matter of self-publication is a delicate, tricky business.  Say you’ve written for years with very little success, and you’re feeling a desperate.  Your family (husband, wife, partner, etc.) is beginning to give off odd vibes about all the time you spend writing “with nothing to show for it.”  They […]

1.  Gearing Up To Write Right now, in preparation for writing, I’m reading novels.  Actually “reading” is misleading.  Tasting. Dipping.  Sipping.  Skimming. Looking for a voice.  Looking for a tone, for a vision, for something. . . .  What interests me more than plots and character development are (1) sentences and (2) authorial voice. There […]

 If you’re writing fiction, what’s a reasonable daily output?  It’s the issue beyond all others–all the technique talk, the strategizing, the research, the preparation.  At some point you have to begin your novel (or short story), and put black words on a white paper or monitor screen.  We all know authors with reputations for high […]

I’ve pulled the trigger on  my new book-to-be, a nonfiction work on hunting.  After some agonizing in a couple of earlier blog entries (I worried that readers don’t hunt, and hunters don’t read) I just had to dive in.  Deadlines are a good thing, and my editor’s winged’ chariot is always hurrying near.  But I’m […]

I’ve written in other blog entries that writing is a process not a miracle.  That publishing a novel is far more about hard work than genius.  That many (if not most) would-be writers do not work hard enough at the sentence level–then gripe about the publishing industry “putting up walls” against new writers. They (the […]

Recently a pleasant young librarian, Jan, from Illinois tracked me down via my website.  She specializes in literature for young adults, and, not surprising, is writing a novel of her own.  She was shy about asking for advice, but I could tell she was hoping for some reaction.  In a moment of Minnesota nice I […]