As an English major in college, I carefully avoided any “creative writing” classes in my major. I’d seen friends struggling to churn out short stories on demand and concluded that creative writing was both frightening and stressful. So I stuck to literature while exploring courses in human biology, psychology, journalism, and computer science. When it came it writing, I’d decided […]
Writing, Courage, and Community
My voice teacher hosts a monthly performance class for her students. Her studio includes professional singers with postgraduate degrees in vocal performance and experience in the local opera theaters. Others are confirmed amateurs, learning for personal development. Yet we are alike in one important way: everyone admits to battling nerves before performing, even when singing in this […]
A Quick Book Review: Between You and Me
Have you ever wanted to argue with a copy editor’s deletion of a hyphen? Do you have strong feelings about using commas for cadence? If so, you’ll love reading Mary Norris’ Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. The book dedicates entire chapters to gendered pronouns, hyphens, apostrophes, and—yes—commas. It sheds light on The New Yorker‘s copy editing styles, including its […]
The Zeigarnick Effect, or the Pull of the Unresolved
It happened again the other night. I watched a television show that concluded with a surprising twist. Later that night and the next morning, the show kept popping into my thoughts, as I pondered different ways the plot might resolve. Ah, the magic of the cliffhanger. Televisions writers know that a fresh, unresolved plot point keeps […]
Finding Flow in the Writing Process
“Not an early start today but it doesn’t matter at all because the unity feeling is back. That is the fine thing. That makes it easy and fun to work.” – John Steinbeck. The unity feeling – you know what Steinbeck means, don’t you? Have you felt it? The writer Zadie Smith describes a state of magical […]
Nine Circles of Subscription Hell
Sometimes revenge is best served in literature. The poet Dante Alighieri, powerless against the forces that had exiled him from his native Florence, populated his vision of hell with proxies for his enemies. The resulting epic poem has become a masterwork in Italian literature. If only politics were so literate today! Dante’s Inferno describes nine […]