Category Archives: teaching
‘Our Secret’ by Susan Griffin
Often I have looked back into my past with a new insight only to find that some old, hardly recollected feeling fits into a larger pattern of meaning.—“Our Secret” Susan Griffin’s long essay, a chapter in her book A Chorus … Continue reading
Shirley Showalter, ubuntu & memoir
Become an observer of your own creative process. It will help you uncover where you “sing” and where your voice falls flat. When you lose track of time and are not thinking about yourself at all but rather about your … Continue reading
Filed under electronic publishing, memoir, MFA, NOTED, spirituality, teaching, working method
Rampant use of the term ‘narrative’
I want to raise the question of what the world thinks “narrative” means, what educated media commentators and writers mean by it, and what relationship does the widespread use of “narrative” have to do with the use of the term … Continue reading
Filed under journalism, narrative, teaching, vocabulary
Scenes that work—for writer and reader
This post appeared originally in 2010 as “Keys to Conveying Experience” Writing theorist Peter Elbow believes a key to effective writing is getting readers to breathe “experience” into the words. To accomplish this effect, the writer must first have the … Continue reading
One writing teacher’s plight
A short story writer, essayist, novelist, memoirist, editor, and writing workshop leader, Paulette Bates Alden has an impressive blog and web site. Her wise essays on writing technique and aspects of memoir are stimulating and useful. Lately I’ve been enjoying … Continue reading
Filed under fiction, memoir, MFA, point of view, subjectivity, teaching
Janet Malcolm, ‘Capote’ & ‘Infamous’
Everyone acknowledges that true stories can never be fully known—too many details lack corroboration, too many witnesses disagree about what really happened.—Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel In Cold Blood created a sensation in America in … Continue reading
Filed under film, honesty, journalism, teaching
Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ revisited
Here’s the evocative, elegiac opening to Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood: The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” Some seventy miles east of … Continue reading
Filed under film, honesty, journalism, syntax, teaching
Phillip Lopate on literary nonfiction
An esteemed essayist and theorist, the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, Phillip Lopate was interviewed in 2008 by Lania Knight for Poets & Writers Magazine, online version. I just stumbled across it, and it’s well worth reading … Continue reading
Filed under creative nonfiction, essay-personal, honesty, NOTED, scene, teaching
