Career advice

One of the things I have missed in the pandemic is getting new inputs and having new experiences. These lead to serendipities in my writing (problems solved and new directions taken) and keep me engaged and energized. A few months ago, just emerging from our isolation, my daughter and I went to a harbor-side restaurant…

Welcome to the Dojo Wisdom for Writers Book Club! Every Wednesday, we meet to discuss one of the lessons in Dojo Wisdom for Writers. We’ll go in order, so it’s easy enough to follow along. Read the lesson, then read the blog post, then comment in the comments! Do feel free to comment on each…

Let me tell you a story about good ideas. When I first started teaching developmental editing, I taught a beginning class for a year or two and it became very popular. The sponsoring organization asked me to teach an intermediate class. So I did that. Finally that asked if I could teach another class, again…

People sometimes wonder how someone as feral as I am came to be a writer, which is all about connecting and communicating with other people. For me, the connecting and communicating with others is more of a bug in the process than a feature. I mean I want people to read my books because otherwise…

“Never trust a storyteller,” Jonathan Gottschall says in The Story Paradox. There are a number of reasons he says this but primary among them is that we’re always manipulating the story for maximum effect. We think about what details to emphasize and which to downplay. We spend a lot of time deciding which rock will…