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When I was in 5th grade, my mom spent hours working on a middle-grade novel. These were the days before word processing, so she used an old Smith Corona electric typewriter. It became a fixture on the dining room table. Eager to follow in her footsteps, I conceived my own novel. I bought a spiral-bound […]

“If we knew you were going to be a writer, we’d have been better parents.” Parents say this to a young woman in a comic strip punch line. In creative nonfiction, just like in life, the best advice is don’t hold back. Sit at the keyboard and let it all go, the hate, rage, self

I don’t believe in writer’s block, per se, but I do believe we can sometimes create blocks around creative goals. Perhaps we were discouraged as a child by a well-meaning parent or teacher. Perhaps, like me, you were told to quit daydreaming, or told that writing — or painting or dancing or acting — was

Lifetimes ago, I flirted with the idea of getting a master’s in social work. But I knew in my heart I was insanely bored by those “established” models and theories in thick, hardbound books: flow charts designed to explain away human behavior.  I like observing oddballs, not trying to fix them. So, nah. I then

Can books tell you about the people who read them? Several years ago I decided to write a book about my mother. The book would be a book about the books she read, or the books I imagined her to have read, because I didn’t actually know or remember what she’d read. I knew the

This wasn’t therapy, damn it, and I’m no therapist. It was a creative nonfiction class and these students were paying good money to gut their lives, plunk the prime pieces on the operating table and, by the end, Frankenstein the remains into a narrative that made some bloody sense. Tall order, sure, but they didn’t

1. Updike was my favorite writer when I first began to write fiction seriously in college. 2. I began a methodical study of Updike by reading everything he wrote in chronological order. Everything. Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, plays, etc. It was a lot, but I learned more from that than any workshop, MFA program or writing

“Obsession is a way of organizing our lives so we never have to deal with the hard part: the part that happens between two years old and dying.” – Geneen Roth I am a compulsive person. When I was in college, did I ever just drink one beer? No. I drank until I threw up,

Depending on how you look at it, my essay title is either inspired by Tony Hoagland’s wonderful collection of poems What Narcissism Means to Me or it’s a straight knockoff. If not every word in the title, then at least the spirit and the idea of it. Curiously, book titles aren’t fully protected under US

For many years I earned a living sculpting superheroes and cartoon characters: Batgirl, Superman, Jimmy Nuetron, Betty Boop, Darth Vadar, Big Bird, Bugs Bunny, Marge and Bart Simpson — hundreds of my original prototypes line the shelves in my studio. I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, I didn’t study literature or attend a