Well, either way you’ll die, so maybe trade some time? Making art is difficult. It takes time, and the beginnings of things aren’t pretty. For example, painting for three hours a night after work so you can potentially have a mediocre painting in a few days isn’t an inspiring process. The same is true for beginning to draw, create collages…

There are two ways to look at the publishing path. First off, I’ll just admit that I didn’t earn an MFA. I was accepted by the University of Montana’s for its MFA Fiction program, and was excited about attending, but realized that I couldn’t afford the tuition (as low as Montana’s tuition is). At the last minute, there was no…

Sometimes it’s not the lyrics. Have you ever noticed that music is words? Not the words in a song — not the lyrics — but the actual music itself? I was trying to write while listening to Barber’s Adagio For Strings this morning since it’s such an incredible, evocative classical piece, and since it DOES…

It’s One Of The Many Things I’m Not Good At I know I’m supposed to be good at driving fast. I mean, I’m a man, right? But the thing is… I don’t like to drive fast. I don’t enjoy driving fast in the city. I don’t enjoy driving fast on rural highways. And — to be completely honest — I…

The Argentinian writer Alejandra Pizarnik hoped for poetry. The Argentine writer Alejandra Pizarnik wrote this in the middle of one of her poems in 1965 (when she was 29) and it made me think of the writing process: “And there is, in this waiting, a rumor of breaking lilac. And there is, when the day arrives, a division…

Simplify, simplify. This will be one of my shortest posts ever. Simple writing advice: Write fewer articles (the, a, an). Write fewer adverbs or no adverbs at all (quickly, softly, loudly, beautifully, greedily, etc.). Adverbs almost always make the sentence worse. Write fewer adjectives (big, thin, strong, soft, heavy, small, etc.). Adjectives…

I’m thankful for the people who planned ahead. I took my dogs running in a field tonight. There’s a five-acre field — Ascot Park— only two blocks from my house, and I take the dogs over there three or four nights a week so they can run wild in the dark underneath the light of the moon or…

You may be writing alone, but you’re not alone. Sometimes you don’t feel like writing. Or you have writer’s block. Or — even though you’re writing, you’re doing the process — it’s not going well. Maybe a scene isn’t coming together, your dialogue isn’t realistic, or you’re outlining and the plot seems too improbable. Maybe you’ve published a book…

It’s stranger than it seems. One of my favorite writing exercises is to go to a coffee shop for an hour to listen, to observe, to eavesdrop. I’m in a coffee shop right now, eavesdropping on multiple conversations, and I’ve realized a few things about dialogue: People mostly talk about themselves. They don’t ask a…