Craft and Creativity
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On Rejection
As we know, life is full of rejection, and writers opt into even more of it. All writers “struggle with” rejection, like we all struggle with aging or high housing prices; but for surprisingly many of us, it is debilitating, the core reason we don’t share our writing, or even write at all. In this…
Once More, With Feeling: On Repetition in Poetry
If I had to listen to one piece of music forever, it might be “When David Heard,” by English Renaissance composer Thomas Tomkins, as performed by a vocal group called the Gesualdo Six. Over hundreds of listens, I’ve come to feel that “When David Heard” has a lot to teach us about the power of repetition in…
Writing About Your Obsessions
Close Study: “One Arm” by Tennessee Williams Read it here, in Internet Archive. Tennessee Williams is regarded as one of the best playwrights of the 20th century, and rightfully so. But what makes his plays so amazing—their tension, their neurotic and conflicted characters, and their lonesome, complicated settings—can be found just as readily in his…