This weekend I sat down for a writing session, intending to write and write and write until it was time to make dinner (which, for the record, was a clean-out-the-freezer extravaganza of dumplings, fish sticks, and chicken tenders; I was a heroine).   I started, but quickly found that wasn’t where I needed to be […]

I’m connecting today to a post by Elizabeth Graver, whom I had the opportunity to study with at Boston College.   I’m launching into a new project that feels like it’s going to take five years to write just a first draft. For more immediate gratification, I’ve been working on a short story, a nonfiction […]

It’s often difficult to describe what it is, technically, that brings a manuscript to life. In early drafts, we try to use interesting verbs and unique adverbs to describe our characters’ actions and give them personality. We make comparisons to invoke all the reader’s senses and make a setting feel real. Yet in this, it’s […]