Sometimes, weeding is the best way to learn how to write. Thinning plants can be as painful as deleting favorite passages of description or dialogue, and just as essential. If seedlings in my garden are two crowded, none of them thrive; if my page is crammed with too many details, I risk losing my readers’ […]

“How long it take to write a book?” my dad asks. “It depends,” I answer. “How long does it have to be?” “As long as it needs,” I reply. “How long is the book you’re writing?” “It was four hundred pages.” I say. “Four hundred pages!” he says. “Wow!” “But now it’s just two hundred,” […]

           If you’ve ever painted a room, you know that rolling on fresh paint is the dramatic part of the job – the part where you see the most progress for the least effort. I’m now in a point in writing Ellen, a novel, which is very much like rolling new paint on a properly […]

I started writing a new novel in February of 2012. I planned to write a chapter a month; in fact, I wrote a chapter every two months until September of last year – until I started over again. For a little external pressure, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, and I had over 80,000 words on […]

            Writing to Change the World, by Mary Pipher, is part autobiography, part writing instruction, and all inspirational. This is a heartening book, one that doesn’t just instruct but also reminds writers of all kinds and all degrees how powerful our stories are, and how essential it is for us to tell them. And Pipher […]