In my Seattle writing courses, I tell students that once upon a time, writers would send out manuscripts to traditional publishers until they got a contract. If they tried and tried but got no contract, some of them would send …
Seattle Writing Course Addresses Self-Publishing Read More »
The Writer’s Workshop Blog highlights my adventures teaching writing classes, Seattle writing classes, writing stories, articles and books, leading travel, food and wine writing classes to France and Italy, traveling the globe, promoting my books including the novel, The Storms …
Are you a planner or a spiller? Do you like to think ahead about your writing or do you simply like to get black on white and let the Muse take you where she will? Though there is much to …
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
Mark Twain
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
“One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store.”
Patricia Marx
I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced…the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always.
Ernest Hemingway
