The Writer August 2013

AUGUST. IT’S A MONTH LIKE NO OTHER. And it has particular resonance for writers because of its heightened luminosity and vivid testimony to nature’s cycles. August intensifies our senses. The gloaming is never as dazzling. The sky never as crisp. After the frolicsome brightness of June and July, August’s golden expressiveness is the first intimation of deeper change, richer colors and stronger moods. William Faulkner, who named a book after August, put it this way: In August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns…

Celebrate Left-Handers Day August 13 with writing advice from six talented lefties. “You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” —JAMES BALDWIN, author of Go Tell It on the Mountain “Music is great training for writing. As is most of being alive. Love, cereal, taxes, tragedy, jazz, all good for writing.” —RICK MOODY, author of The Ice Storm “Don’t write about what you know – write about what you’re interested in… There’s a whole world out there to explore.” —TRACY CHEVALIER, author of Girl with a Pearl Earing “I think what you actually learn is the art of self-editing. It’s that ability to look at a line dispassionately and not feel…

When I was in college, one of my sorority sisters paid me by the page to edit her term papers. And by “edit,” I mean “rewrite.” It was a pretty good deal for both of us. I’d make a few extra bucks and she could hand in her work knowing that every there, they’re and their was in the right place. One day, as she handed me a stack of papers and a check, she mused, “You make it look so easy.” By “easy,” she meant “fast.” For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a fast writer. And fast has served me well. Fast got me through college, where I majored in journalism while writing and editing for the school paper until the wee hours. Fast made all…

I see exercises for writers that use the term “freewrite.” What does that mean, exactly? FREEWRITING IS A PRE-WRITING activity, where you set a certain amount of time aside (usually 10-20 minutes) and write for that entire period of time. Keep your hand moving across the page (or your fingers moving on the keyboard). If you get stuck, write about feeling stuck. If you can’t summon up another word, then simply write the last word you wrote over and over until you come up with something else. Do not edit as you go. Do not concern yourself with proper grammar. Do not evaluate as you write. The idea is to keep yourself ahead of your internal editor, who can sometimes snip an idea before it has a chance to flower.…

Susan Choi Novelist and Princeton creative-writing professor Susan Choi won the Asian American Literary Award for her debut novel The Foreign Student, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her second American Women and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for her third A Person of Interest. Choi’s prose is often cast in long, elegant sentences, and the subject matter of her work includes an abduction narrative loosely based on the story of Patty Hearst and the experiences of a first-generation Korean immigrant to America in the 1950s. Choi’s fourth and most recent novel is My Education. What is the most important thing you’ve learned about writing? To write constantly, even without any clear idea of what I’m doing or whether or not I’ll keep what I’ve written, almost like…

Blurring the line of creative disciplines, art colonies often are not exclusively for visual artists. Many provide the time and space writers need to tackle creative projects. The cross-pollination among the arts inspires everyone to expand creative breadth. Art colonies foster a collaborative environment where residents are “buoyed by the presence of other artists,” says Julia Jacquette, a painter and board member of the MacDowell Colony, one of the oldest arts colonies in the U.S. Jacquette has attended several residencies at MacDowell in Peterborough, N.H. and at Yaddo in Sarasota Springs, N.Y. Both provided “serious uninterrupted work time” and transformed her career. “It allows me to enter my artwork in a deeper way,” she says. “I can think more clearly, and build momentum in the studio.” Think beyond the page.…