The Writer December 2015

Have YOUR story read by novelist Colum McCann! Write a 2,000-word short story responding to one or both quotes by novelist and short story writer Colum McCann (and perhaps keep in mind Robert Frost’s poem “A Road Not Taken”). What elements of duality and divergence can you include: duplicitous acts, binary oppositions, communication with the “other side,” double indemnity, twins? Let your imagination riff on taking a plot, character, setting or theme in two directions. Novelist and short story writer Column McCann will read the finalists and choose the winners. writermag.com/contests “There is always room for at least two truths." —TransAtlantic “With all respects to heaven, I like it here." — Let the Great World Spin…

Welcome to the MFA edition of the magazine. We hope you enjoy the discussions about what author Mia Alvar (interviewed in these pages) calls the “mental and creative independence” supported by MFA programs – and other writing programs in the higher education realm. You won’t want to miss Dinty W. Moore’s comic and insightful take on creative writing and the ways in which breaking the rules can also reset your imagination. He and Alvar are both on to that. If your goal is to drill down into the work of successful fiction writers, be sure to check out our interview with novelist Christine Sneed and a slew of other writers in the “Facty with Fiction” feature about turning real-life events into fictional stories. “Writers are always selling somebody out,” Joan…

Shutterstock It happened in summer. Some neighbors were getting together to plan a party, and I was the odd person out because I am not a big partygoer. But this one was in celebration of a relative, so I wanted to be there. And the party had distantly been my idea, an idea that passed through my thoughts and out of my mouth before I realized anyone was listening. At least two people were, and it grew from there. When I arrived at the home of the host for the obligatory planning session, coffee and tea were served, chocolates were on the table and everyone took a seat. I was distracted, my mind was elsewhere, but because I was out of my comfort zone, my attentiveness to detail kicked in.…

Nick Flynn is a memoirist, poet, essayist and playwright. His first memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City – which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award – meditates on his relationship with his mother and with his father, from whom Flynn was estranged until they reunited by chance when his father checked into a Boston homeless shelter where Flynn happened to be working. Suck City was adapted into a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Julianne Moore, with Flynn as executive producer – an experience he describes in his third and most recent memoir The Reenactments. In addition to three memoirs and essays in publications including The New Yorker, Flynn is also the author of several volumes of poetry, which, like his memoirs, are deeply personal and which have garnered awards including…

“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams,” says novelist Neil Gaiman. Reread your favorite short story. Choose a substantial paragraph – one that captures your imagination – and write it in longhand with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper. Diagram how the action occurs, how transitions take place, how verbs, adverbs and adjectives function. Find the “other worlds” and “dreams.” Then rewrite the paragraph in your own words, paying homage to your own worlds and dreams. Or use your observations to pump up a story you’re crafting. Find out more about The Writer's newest short story contest on PAGE 1…

Learn every grammar rule there is so that you can make an informed decision about when to defy those rules. (I never once heard it said of a good writer, “Oh, so-and-so is such a great grammarian.”) —Christopher J. Yates, Black Chalk Powerful verbs scrub my work clean. They manipulate a psychological thriller – the grim unease, the emotion, the pageflipping pace. I especially love “pulse” and “thrum.” Strong verbs allow me to write sparely and abandon the rest to the imagination. That way, the reader and I are in the game together. —Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans Many of my characters are obsessed with grammar, often in ways that confine them, but for me, grammar has always been liberating. Thinking about it slows me down. I find inspiration in crafting…