It is one of my greatest fears. I have abandoned my creativity before; this blog is my chronicle of returning to an art-committed life and working to stay there. That is also a central theme of the travel memoir I am in the process of polishing to final. But it is so easy to drift away […]
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Five Keys to Living an Art-Committed Life
April 30, 2013 
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His story is simultaneously inspiring and horrifying. After ten years in the rat-race of London, James Rhodes returned to his true passion, the piano. He dedicated himself to achieving the mastery he had dreamed of as a youth. And now, after years of dedication and hard work, James is a concert pianist. In his essay […]
Read moreA Model for Feedback on Your Creative Work
April 4, 2013 28 Comments
“Writing is a solitary pursuit,” said award-winning author Robin Hemley, explaining why he has “no patience” for belonging to a writer’s group. You might argue that Robin has reached a level in his career where he doesn’t need feedback from other writers. He is an accomplished writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. He directs the […]
Read moreAvoiding ‘Truthiness’ When Writing Your Life
March 25, 2013 185 Comments
“Did that really happen?” It’s a question every memoirist and personal essayist faces. Ideally the writer will answer “Yes.” It gets awkward when you have to say, “Yes, but…” In the October 2005 debut episode of his influential TV show, Stephen Colbert gave the world the word truthiness. He said truthiness is when you’re talking […]
Read moreAWP Nugget: The Bubbling Debate over Self-Publishing
March 9, 2013 33 Comments
BOSTON — The fireworks didn’t come during the panel session, which is a good thing, because every square inch of the floor was covered by attendees. Pyrotechnics in rooms violating fire codes never end well. But the figurative fireworks came that night, assisted with alcohol. I refer here to the third rail of our modern […]
Read moreAWP Nugget: Left-Brain Planning for a Right-Brain Conference
March 5, 2013 15 Comments
The process of creating art fires neurons in the right side of our brains. Planning and organization processes in the left side. Planning the most creative use of one’s time at North America’s largest literary conference requires whole-brain thinking. Every artist I interviewed on my cross-country U.S. road trip understood the role of planning in […]
Read moreImposing Deadlines on Your Work-In-Progress
February 12, 2013 42 Comments
One of the challenges of an art-committed life is that to produce quality art, you must meet deadlines. Sometimes those deadlines are self-imposed, with no fatal consequences befalling you if they are not met. I find myself wrestling with that challenge right now, as I look ahead to the finish line with my work-in-progress, a […]
Read moreWhat Leads You to Choose the Next Book You’ll Read?
February 5, 2013 30 Comments
I’m grateful to The Washington Post for publishing on Saturday my letter to the editor. My beef was with the paper’s nonfiction book reviews. With novels, the reviewers break down both the story and the writing. But far too often, for nonfiction books The Post recruits an expert in the field, who then critiques the […]
Read moreA Creative Writer Braves the Inauguration
January 23, 2013 17 Comments
This is not a post about politics. It is about a creative writer struggling to maintain an art-committed life. The story begins with a trip to the second Inauguration of President Barack Obama. I was one of approximately 500,000 people to make my way to Washington, D.C.’s National Mall Monday to witness the ceremony. I […]
Read moreStruggling with the Supposed Distinction of Literary vs. Commercial
December 4, 2012 13 Comments
In three weeks I will drive to Montpelier, Vermont, to begin my final semester in an MFA in Writing program. Over the last few weeks I have devoted every spare minute to polishing the first draft of my work-in-progress–a travel memoir–so that I can hand the manuscript to whichever faculty member I am paired with […]
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