I previously wrote a few words on the importance to the writer of the suspension of disbelief. I would like to say a little more because I did not say all that I feel on that topic. Samuel Taylor Coleridge…
Second Person: Write down, not up by Adam Dove
Second person is like the lonely middle child of writing perspectives. Everybody knows first person, because it’s always talking about itself. It just feels kind of natural, like it’s always been there. And third person – everybody wants to be…
Discontinuity in Fiction by David Massey
Morse Peckham, a professor under whom I took a class in graduate school, had a theory that the role of the arts in a complex, stressful society is to provide discontinuity, so that people might rehearse the experience of it…
Book Review by Lauren Sartor: “Life on Mars” by Tracy K. Smith
The poetry in Tracy K Smith’s book, Life on Mars, examines the limitedness of the human species. The poetry speculates on the smallness of humankind, the incapacity of human intellectuality, and the irrationality of human emotions. The language is accessible…
More on the Senses by David Massey
I want to say a few more words about the senses in literature. So much can be accomplished through visceral detail. Consider the first paragraph of Anton Chekhov’s “The Beauties”: I remember, when I was a high-school boy in the…
On Method by David Massey
I read a statement by an author recently that if one does not follow a regular regimen of daily composition, one is not a serious writer. This was a fairly vain statement, it seemed to me, because it relegates the…
On Style by David Massey
Katherine Anne Porter said as true a thing as there is to say about style: “You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.” When I began writing seriously,…
Leaning on the Senses by David Massey
The senses are all we have. Without them we would be only a blob of protoplasm without even a sense of touch, and therefore with no ability to survive. Fiction is much the same. The fiction writer who best deploys…
How to Write a Sugar-Soaked Story by Noelle Sterne
Taking a break from writing, I flip the television channels and my eyes and remote land at a bright-screen, an urban setting with upbeat music, slick high-rises, and smartly dressed people hurrying about. A respite from the moody brown tones…
The Train Whistle by Nancy Scott
It always startles me. I always feel its vibrating, out-of-place call. Usually, I hear it just before or during rain or snow. I have heard it off and on for the 13 years I’ve lived in this apartment. I never…
Building a Writing Life out of Hard Work, Passion, and a Dash of Involvement by Heather Humphrey
Most of the writers I know keep some sort of motivational support handy: a clever phrase written on a post-it note, a poster of a beloved writer, a highly dog-eared copy of “Bird by Bird,” the photograph of a stern…
Turning My Screenplay into the Novel “Creature Storms” by Ron Clinton Smith
Movies are based on novels usually, but why shouldn’t it be the other way around? As an actor/writer I’d poured over other people’s scripts for years. I’d written stories and unfinished novels, and knew it was time to write this screenplay I’d been…