Death or Transformation?

I’ve been reading a lot these past few weeks about the amazing rise of the eBook, and the death of reading, writing and literature as we know it. Amazon ebook sales topped traditional hard-copy format. The future of the book is so precarious that it requires a think-tank to monitor its demise. And nearly everywhere [...]

Read Full Post »

The Best Gift for Writers

You may have noticed that I don’t often blog about technique. For me, this forum is more about sharing the experience of writing. The truth about craft is that it’s all in the doing. We each confront the blank page or screen time and again. We learn to accept struggle, failure and critique, then go [...]

Read Full Post »

Briefer Stories for Our Times

Take a look at A.O. Scott’s lovely and appropriately brief survey and prediction of the American short story in Brevity’s Pull: In Praise of the American Short Story. It’s especially relevant to so many creative writers who often focus at least initially on the short story form. Short stories have only very rarely brought any [...]

Read Full Post »

Stegner’s Centennial

February 18 was Wallace Stegner’s centennial. He has always been one of my favorites, and in a fascinating commentary in The New York Times, Timothy Egan reminds me why. Stegner’s work was rooted in the rough reality of a thankless life in settings that, even when they didn’t (rarely) reek of the dusty sweep of [...]

Read Full Post »