Category Archives: Dreaming on Paper

Remember the Great Depression? The stock market crash of 1929? Ticker tape machines? Men jumping out of windows? Bathtub Gin? Giggle water? Al Capone? Neither do I; I wasn’t even born. But I don’t feel too bad and you shouldn’t … Continue reading →

Like everyone else, I was shocked to learn of David Foster Wallace’s suicide last Friday, and of the unendurably long winter of depression that preceded it. Up to the moment when I heard the news on the radio Wallace had … Continue reading →

If there’s one thing I can’t accuse my students of, it’s dishonesty. They are, to say the least, candid—refreshingly so—in part because I’ve asked them to be. And because I’ve assured them that in my classroom their honesty will never … Continue reading →

“I can’t fix a blank page,” bestselling author Nora Roberts has famously said, providing me with the best if not the only excuse I can imagine for those often frightening documents called “first drafts.” In Bird By Bird, her inspirational … Continue reading →