The Craftsmanship of Editing
It never fails to amaze me, even after so many years of working with texts, that, no matter how often you go over the same text, you still find [...]
19
Jan, 2017
25
Nov, 2014
Why a Real Life Story is Never the Whole Story
A drab and wet November morning--perfect for revising at the Royal Coffee House. Monday evening two weeks ago I wrote a story. I wrote it sitting in my car. I plugged [...]
17
Feb, 2014
Dump those Qualifiers and Modifiers
One insight from Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones has already affected how I write. Here it is: "In the early seventies there was a study done on women and language [...]
20
Jan, 2014
Cut and Tape a Text
I love the cut and paste feature of Word, but every now and then, I resort to scissors and tape to arrange a text. Whenever I struggle with structure, I [...]
22
Jan, 2013
The Paramedic Method of Editing
I'm still struggling with trimming an essay to meet word count. This essay's parking lot is full! So I decided to employ the Paramedic Method that I teach in [...]
14
Jan, 2013
The Beauty of the Parking Lot Method of Editing
Luc-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, June 2009 Ok, so the parking lot in this picture is beautiful because it is a) on the Normandy Coast of France, and b) features a [...]
11
Jun, 2012
Literary Magazine Layout
The past few days I've become obsessed with creating a book in blurb, as I am handling the layout of the literary magazine my son's school is publishing. It's [...]
28
Feb, 2011
Every Story Has Its Own Integrity
Every story develops its own integrity. There are things that belong in it, and things that don’t. If you’ve worked on it for a while, it will take on [...]