It can be a problem, falling in love with a main character. I typically have avoided this pitfall by stepping into another one: feeling...

I once had a rather hostile relationship with the chicken. I would bake several chicken breasts and then, after they cooled, one of them...

When I worked at a federal agency in the 1980s, there was an official memorandum pinned to the cubicle wall of an engineering technician....

I recall vividly this lecture from Professor Claeyssens. Eyes widened; head cocked; nod in my direction; slow, intriguing, deep voice:...

When “Nottingham” was in its earliest stages of being “conceptualized” – the heady moments of characters and their names “coming” to me, and the beginnings of a plot line forming (although the line was hardly linear at that point) – 1994 was well underway. I was trading hours for money working at a Montessori preschool where my daughter finally accepted the setting, personnel, and surroundings (this preschool was “our” third attempt) as an acceptable alternative to being with

The blank page: it looms before you. For some writers, it is a wave of emptiness that must be dodged quickly, thereby snuffing out the...

Spring 2020: The very first essay that I posted on my new website, “Suffering for One’s Art”, remains as true and cogent as ever. ...