Craft and Creativity
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When a Life Becomes a Story: Balancing Emotional Truth & Narrative Skill
While I’m primarily a fiction writer, I love to read memoir. The in-depth peek into someone’s private life fascinates me. I always feel a bit like Dorothy pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. Over the past couple of months, I’ve read three memoirs by three different women, and what struck me most…
A Story I Had to Unlearn: How Flash Fiction Changed My Writing
Flash fiction is everywhere lately. At least, I’m seeing it much more often than ever before. Not as a sudden trend, exactly, but as a steady presence that keeps surfacing in places where writing lives. It shows up on Substack, in literary magazines, writing competitions, and even on social media. The term “flash fiction” is…
What Makes Revision So Hard?
There is no shortage of craft books, poetry guides, artist’s manuals, and Substack thinkpieces articulating the power of poetic revision. Everyone, myself included, thinks they have something wise to impart about the process of shaping sand into sandcastles, clay into sculptures, or whatever analogy you want to represent the act of revision. Still, none of…