Month: January 2013

Students who suffer from writer’s block often describe writing as an abstraction or a mystical trance that occurs unwittingly and without explanation.  Understandably, it’s that sense of writing being outside of one’s direct control that seems to provoke the greatest anxiety and frustration for them.  Will the trance come mercifully before deadline and keep them…

Ironically, the best student in class is all too often the one who suffers from writer’s block.  She is often the student who arrives prepared and on time, who takes notes and asks insightful questions.  When this student misses a writing deadline, the behavior seems completely contradictory, and yet when I stop to ask, this…

In a recent essay in Parabola (37;4 Winter 2012-13) titled “The Older Writer in the Underworld,” Julia Alvarez reflects on the importance of story not to the listener but to the story-teller, and how, at different points in her life, she has identified with different characters.  “As a younger writer, the story I repeated over and over…

Unbridled Books asked its authors: “What’s the best piece of writing advice you have ever given or received?” The best advice I ever received about writing bridged the great divide between talk and walk.  It came from a wonderful writer and teacher, Maxine Clair.  Author of October Suite and Rattlebone, Clair’s work has that same quality…