Like many writers, particularly writers of innovative fiction or fiction otherwise out of the mainstream, my writing contributes zero to my ability to pay my bills. Consequently, I have to fit my writing schedule around my job. Of course, my life involves more than just writing and job, and I think all of us can…
Craft Notes: Dialogue
Paul West asserts that dialogue in fiction is for the eye, a way of offering the reader a bit of a rest now and then, and little more. I've been accused eschewing dialogue in my own work. But such readers might want to reconsider: could be all my work is composed of a dialogue, with…
Craft Note: Marcel Proust’s Asparagus
In Swann's Way, the opening work of Marcel Proust's opus In Search of Lost Time, you will find the following oft-remarked-upon passage [2003 Viking edition, translation by Lydia Davis]: I would stop by the table, where the kitchen maid had just shelled them, to see the peas lined up and tallied like green marbles in…
Craft Note: Love Your Mistakes!
I suppose I could have also called this short post "Love Your First Draft's Moles and Warts." However you look at it, you have to fall in love with your first draft, even if it's a clunky, undistinguished, vague, pedestrian, mistake-ridden mess. You have to fall in love with the mess that is your first…
Craft Notes: Paul West’s Technical Advice for Fiction Writers, Part X
The novelist Paul West has had the greatest influence on my development as a writer. I first had the good fortune of encountering this member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Prix Médicis and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, Literary Lion of the New York Public Library system, and…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 