Two truths about handling criticism:

Truth #1: One of the BEST things you can do as a writer is to heed criticism from others.

Truth #2: One of the WORST things you can do as a writer is to heed … Read more

Two things I’ve loved about this spring: seeing What Can’t Wait on a real shelf in a real bookstore and seeing our little boy Liam crawl, walk, giggle, eat, and be.

One thing I didn’t always enjoy but love being … Read more

I’m a big fan of the building-on-your-strengths school of thought. I can expend energy trying to be someone I’m not (e.g., a humorist), or I can put that energy to work in a direction that’s natural for me. But when … Read more

This is a page from my writer’s notebook back before the story for What Can’t Wait even existed, back when I was just doing exploratory writing to find my way into the characters. 

People often ask me, “how much of … Read more

You’ve seen them around, those super cool clouds of most frequent words in a text. Maybe you saw the ones that were floating around after the most recent state of the union speech. See word clouds for a number of … Read more

Twice in the past two weeks my brain has worked overtime for me outside of normal business hours to cook some ideas for me with very little conscious effort on my part. 

Maybe–like some men I know–the brain will only … Read more

Hey, check out my guest post for the stellar writing exchange website, figment.com. Once you get turned onto this site, you might not be able to get away. I have a serious crush on it.

If you haven’t been over to Tayari Jones’s blog, you’re missing out. I haven’t gotten to read her novels yet, although they’re on my read-after-PhD-exams list. But it seems like just about every time I stop by her blog, … Read more

Q: How do you eat an elephant?

A: One bite at a time?

Okay, so I chose a cartoon elephant for my post image because, obviously, none of us are actually interested in eating elephants. I mean, come on–tough gray … Read more

Rainer Maria Rilke has been one of my favorite poets for a long time. Recently as I was digging through an old writer’s notebook (from 4 years ago), I came across this list of advice I gathered from Letters to … Read more