Degrees of Intimacy … in Words

Fiction-writing is a different beast – thrilling to engage after so much practice in resolving everything into concepts, expressing them, and inviting an audience to ponder and, ideally, agree. I’ve been experimenting with live readings of fictional vignettes to a group of extremely varied listeners. The group was facilitated by long-time fiction fans who expected […]

Voice II

“If I write that, people will think it’s me.” This quote from Amy Tan, in her spirited TED talk about writing fiction, has been singing to me for days. It struck the place in me that’s so focused on integrity that the idea of representing something that’s not-me, when my name is on it, felt dangerous, […]

Voice, Format, Audience

Mercy. Another writing career. The inner machinery of expression – the place I go to inside, to feel words form – is changing again. It’s being altered by the convergence of two worlds from opposite extremes: (1) inside-out: shaping ever-subtler inner experience into outer form, and (2) outside-in: practicing the audience-driven formats of screenplays and […]