Mar 10, 2021
Does Your Revision Process Need More Taylor Swift?
For all her various contrived public personas and her possibly manufactured cult following, Taylor Swift is a modern day poet.
The Lie in My Novel
“Where the fiction began—and who was authoring it—was getting confusing.”
May 10, 2017
Writing About Marriage When You Want to Stay Married
“I am posting a bulletin from the sanctuary behind that closed bedroom door.”
Apr 24, 2017
The First Time I Got Paid to Write
My first screenwriting gig, a skateboarding chimpanzee, and a hospital cancer ward.
Mar 24, 2017
Losing My Voice and Finding It
In the quiet forced upon me, I started to hear the voices of other selves.
Feb 15, 2017
Beyond the Realm of Prosody: The year I spent writing sonnets
How I wrote a failed sonnet that turned into my fourth novel.
Sep 22, 2016
Throwing It Out and Starting Again
“I now see fiction—my own and that of others—as work paused but never finished.”
Aug 25, 2016
Meeting Nadine Gordimer
“I now accept that I am forever doomed to learning from my mistakes, whether in crafting a sentence, creating a book, or living out my life. That’s the writer’s burden.”
Jun 16, 2016
Writers From the Other Europe
“My new professor, with his reading list of Central and Eastern European literature, had handed me a vast map with so much good territory to explore.”
May 26, 2016
Standing on the Galata Bridge
“If I could write a eulogy for him, convey his value in a single page of prose, then how could I justify wasting 80,000 words on invented characters whom I felt nothing for?”
May 19, 2016
When Your Memoir Needs Less of You
“It feels reassuring to write everything you remember, how it all felt. But to write well sometimes involves rejecting reassurance.”
May 12, 2016
