My mother’s nickname in our family was “the dog psychologist,” because whenever our dog behaved strangely she always had some complicated explanation for how it must be feeling based upon the traumas she imagined it had experienced before we got it from the pound. This sounds familiar, right? We love to put people, animals, friends, … Read more

I have a friend that’s a composer. I once asked him, “How do you know how to blend together the violin and the french horn and the kettle drum and all those different instruments?” He looked at me funny and replied, “You go to graduate school.” What he meant by that was: “It’s complicated!” That’s … Read more

I have begun teaching the second wave of classes in my ongoing series. The second wave, which I call “Writers in Action” is an actual critique session, where, in a group setting, I look at student work with a view to how well students are embodying the lessons learned in the free technique classes I … Read more

We just had our third class in a series: “Make ’em Beg for It,” and I think this actually completes a three-class series that sets my students up to start writing with a good sense of what they’re doing. The first class was about identifying a story’s setting and action without the emotional, philosophical, and … Read more

When you’re writing your memoir as a series of short stories, as the students in my class are learning to do, it’s important to know where to open your story. Spoiler: it’s seldom where you think. Remember that this is a class about writing technique whose goal is to make your stories un-put-down-able to people … Read more

Here’s a brief recap on class one, which I taught last week on writing memoir short stories. What I’m trying to do as I teach these classes is break down what I do when I’m working on a memoir for a client, as a ghostwriter. That’s not easy, because I do it all pretty intuitively, … Read more