Just another writer

  • Residency day 0

    This is the first of a set of daily blog posts I intend to write about the residency for my MFA at the University of Tampa. I’m currently on a Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago to Tampa, with a suitcase full of clothes and books, a carry-on with a bunch more books, manuscripts, iPad and…

  • Pixar rules of plotting

    A useful guide for plotting from Emma Coats. Via Kottke.

  • Beautiful Sentences

    The question is not, he said, were you loved. Or did you love. Or did you love yourself. Or did you allow love to move you, though that’s a big one. Move you. The question, Rockwell, is did you get to be who you are And if not, then why. That, my friend, is the…

  • Girning

    I’m always on the lookout for new words, opportunities to push the boundaries of my vocabulary, so when I encountered the word “girning” in an A. S. Byatt short story, I had to make a note of this one. In the context, it was a whining or complaining sound (made, in this case by a…

  • Beautiful sentences

    I’ll immortalize you, you’ll become the book I was always meant to write, the one where the forgeries of our humanity become the timeless tragedies of our race. Robert Vivian, The Mover of Bones.

  • Beautiful sentences

    A man retains the structure of integrity, even after he has sold off the shelves of goods that integrity insisted should never be sold. Michael Winter, The Big Why.

  • Counting down to the first residency

    There’s only three weeks until I begin my first residency for the MFA. I’ve had the residency packet for a couple weeks and have been doing big piles of reading in preparation for this. They’ve added a few new instructors and since one of the workshop sessions will be what’s billed as a “wildcard session”…

  • Beautiful sentences

    In the matter of belief, I have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are meant to answer. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead.

  • How a book is born

    Amusing and accurate infographic.