Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.
The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity whiich you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as a necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that [...]

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I love vintage books. I’m starting to collect vintage pulp books– mostly those that have been made into movies, like these:

The Bad Seed, Revolt (or Day of) The Triffids, and The Left Hand of God (that’s Humphrey Bogart on the cover–he was in the film version). I believe I got all of these [...]

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The Writer’s Almanac– hosted by Garrison Keillor 7pm weeknights on NPR (yes, i’ve become one of those people), states that it’s Gore Vidal’s 83rd birthday today. (born in 1925).

He (Gore) said, “Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn.”

You go, Gore!

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I’m trying to blog more regularly– even if it’s just short snippets.
And, you may notice that in the blog i’m trying to focus on writing (and my writing) more often– in the hopes that it will spur me on to finish this draft of my book. Not that I won’t still muse about T-shirts and [...]

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Last night had another great Creative Nonfiction class.
Can I just say how much I love teaching a night class like this? Eager, enthusiastic students who love to talk about the readings. And last night’s reading were a doozy:
1. A short profile of Lily Koppel’s book The Red Leather Diary, about how, in 2002 Koppel (a [...]

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On a recent drive to work I heard Phillip Roth talking about his new novel, Indignation, on All Things Considered/NPR with Rober Siegel.
Says Roth:
I work the same schedule i’ve worked all my life, which is I work a full day, 6 or 7 days a week…
I always consider that day O.K. if I come away [...]

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So the other wonderful thing that happened as a result of being the guest speaker last week in my friend Sydney’s Creative Writing class was that I was introduced to two incredible new (for me) writers:
Lidia Yuknavitch
and
Stanton Michaels
These are two writers whose names have been on my radar but who, for some reason, i’ve never [...]

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Dag! No time to really blog today– and I wanted to write about my experience yesterday as a special guest
in my colleague, Sydney Brown’s Intro to Creative Writing class. I read a short-short creative nonfiction piece that I had published a couple of years ago and then answered questions from the class about it. I’ll [...]

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I just discovered this new writer– I don’t think anyone’s heard of him yet– Joshua Ferris.
Just kidding. I mean about anyone hearing of him yet. I’m the slow one. Of course i’ve known who Joshua Ferris is for a while now.  Felicia has gushed about him and his book Then We Came To The End [...]

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I’m enjoying my moleskin diary.
I’ve decided to title this diary ‘39′ in honor of this being my 39th year. I want to see at the end of April (my birthday) what i’ve written in this year.
Last Monday, the 25th, was the first day teaching my Creative Nonfiction class. It was a great first day (night, [...]

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