Category Archives: The Writing Process
From Rilke, With Love
Whenever I get swept up in the competitive, audience-seeking dimension of the writing life, I turn to Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet as an antidote. Rilke returns me to my essential, life-giving reasons for writing. What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love; you must somehow keep working at it and not lose too much time and too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people. Art-making both awakens and … Continue reading
Are you writing?
During a moment of discouragement this morning—others writers have better focus than me, more time to read great literature, no three-year-old pulling love and attention away from the page—I flashed back to college, to what I now realize is a seminal moment in my development as a writer. The world looked bleak (Was it my miserable relationship with my boyfriend? The overwhelming stress of senior year? The overcooked green beans in the cafeteria?); I complained … Continue reading
Triage
I’m a great proponent of the triage method of revising: Take care of the big problems first and gradually work your way down to the details of language. This is a great policy—in the abstract. If there’s such a thing as a time-saver, prioritizing is it. And generally writers DO pay more attention to word choice, sentence structure, rhythm and sound the closer they get to publication. But in reality writers, to varying degrees, can’t … Continue reading