Do great writers occupy a unique subspecies of the human race? Are their brains wired differently, or are they people who manage to work through the barriers that stump others? In the course of working on my upcoming book on optimizing the writing process, I discovered Sarah Stodola’s wonderful book Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors. If writing is […]
Writers and the Myths of Creativity
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 […]