“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” – Stephen King (not the first person to say it, but perhaps the most ominous) It’s a common piece of advice to give to beginning writers, and it’s been attributed to everyone from Faulkner to Wilde. Slate.com […]
One of my favorite books from the Children’s Lit classes I took in college was Treasure Island. Stevenson stuck with me as an example I wanted to emulate, because nothing in that book is wasted. Every piece of foreshadowing pays off, every bit of character development comes into play by the end, and the father-son […]
Can we be brutally honest? As a writer, you simply cannot be a nice person – at least not when it comes to your characters. There is no quicker way to lose reader interest than to present characters who never face failure or loss, who are never in danger, who never have to make impossible […]
I’ll admit it. I am a Pinterest addict, heading rapidly towards 10,000 pins. I make some sort of Pinboard for every class I teach, and every project I plan – not to mention those I’ll probably never get around to. While the most obvious thing for a writer to do with Pinterest is marketing, I […]
On Friday, we had a meeting with the new/returning Work Study Employees for the kids/teen camps. I asked them all to tell each other their majors. When they’d gone around the room, one of them jokingly asked, “So what’s your major.” “Life,” I said. And it’s true. I finished my last round of formal education […]
So I thought I’d kick this off with a few of my favorite things. Bicycling into the sunset, a really good chocolate cupcake, The Princess Bride. Let’s focus for a moment on that last one. I’ve spent the morning putting together my PowerPoint for the character development session of the class I’m currently teaching, and […]
