February 17, 2023
MY MOTHER POSSESSED dozens of memorable sayings, all of which got stitched into me in more or less productive ways. When I was young...
January 28, 2023
ONCE YOU’VE WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED hundreds of thousands of words, chances are good that you’ll sometimes experience the great delight of someone quoting you...
January 6, 2023
Recently, while a friend was recounting placing her estranged father in hospice, she mentioned the wind on that day, dropped in the curious and...
January 5, 2023
YOU SHOULD WRITE AN OP-ED. Yes, you. Why? Simply put, learning to write op-eds will transform your writing. While the ways in which it...
October 29, 2022
A student in my Master Class recently asked if I had any bad writing habits. I just snorted in reply. Of course...
June 19, 2022
SOMETIMES WRITERS GET INVITED to do things they have only dreamed about. I once dreamed about writing and publishing songs, and spent my teens...
March 12, 2022
DOES YOUR MEMOIR ASK A QUESTION, or do you need to create one? Although I’ve been teaching memoir for more than a quarter-century, as...
February 21, 2022
HOW DO YOU CHOOSE WHAT TO WRITE? Some topics merely interest us, while others fascinate us. But is our interest enough to make those...
January 27, 2022
ALMOST EVERY DAY I get a question from a writer about how to describe something or someone. I work as a writing coach and...
September 5, 2021
KNOWING HOW TO WRITE THE PERFECT first sentence to a memoir is not a magical process. It is not something that you can force,...
June 6, 2021
COVID HAS US ALL STREAMING, WATCHING and re-watching our favorite shows. In that rewatching you have a marvelous opportunity to learn huge lessons about...
April 28, 2021
THERE IS AN OLD expression in journalism that states, “go with what you’ve got.” It’s a dictum I live by. It does not mean...
