Regardless of how long you’ve been writing, or how successful you’ve been in your literary career, you have more to learn. This series of essays is dedicated to that proposition. Each is a boiled-down observation on some element of the craft I’ve been trying to master for more than fifty years. I offer these thoughts to my colleagues and welcome your lessons in return.

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Write Away Essays:

The editorial hole

By David Benjamin | 12/17/2024 | Comments Off on The editorial hole

by David Benjamin “How to write: butt in chair. Start each day anywhere. Let yourself do it badly. Just take one passage at a time. Get butt back in chair.” Anne Lamott MADISON, Wis.—Since the mid-1970s, I’ve spent my life deep in the editorial hole with no way out and no serious effort to escape.……

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The residue of journalism

By David Benjamin | 12/05/2024 | Comments Off on The residue of journalism

by David Benjamin “From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.” ― Isabel Allende MADISON,……

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The magic of “narrative transportation”

By David Benjamin | 11/19/2024 | Comments Off on The magic of “narrative transportation”

by David Benjamin “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly……

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“Style” is not fashion

By David Benjamin | 11/05/2024 | Comments Off on “Style” is not fashion

You can call it copy editing or nitpicking. But the exhaustive application of “style” rules, in grammar and punctuation are a basic necessity to the discipline and reputation of a serious writer. by David Benjamin “The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing……

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Characters and types

By David Benjamin | 10/29/2024 | Comments Off on Characters and types

by David Benjamin “Characterization is only hard because sometimes I feel I get so interested in it that I want to talk too much about the characters and that slows the story down. So I say, ‘Hey, people want to find out what’s going to happen next, they don’t want to listen to you spout……

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“What’s your story?”

By David Benjamin | 10/14/2024 | Comments Off on “What’s your story?”

by David Benjamin “The novel is the highest example of subtle interrelatedness that man has discovered.” —D.H. Lawrence PARIS—One of my recurring arguments with readers—which never actually occur—is about the power of fiction to clarify the non-fictional reality in which we live and die. At almost every event where I shmooze with readers, I hear……

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“Professional”

By David Benjamin | 10/01/2024 | Comments Off on “Professional”

by David Benjamin “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” —Richard Bach PARIS—When I was in high school, it was my devoutest wish to call myself a writer. Lately, in book talks and public presentations, I’ve amended my title to “professional writer.” The rub is, what have I done to merit this presumption?……

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Jim Otis’ gun

By David Benjamin | 09/16/2024 | Comments Off on Jim Otis’ gun

by David Benjamin “He opened the passenger side. He flipped open the glovebox and gently withdrew his Colt .44, a gun he rarely heeled and never fired. Once in a while, he displayed it for effect. It looked pretty much like the gun that John Wayne and Clint Eastwood had used to blow the brains……

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The seven species of memory

By David Benjamin | 09/03/2024 | Comments Off on The seven species of memory

by David Benjamin “Memory is, among the faculties of the human mind, that of which we make the most frequent use … Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.” ―Samuel Johnson MADISON, Wis.—“There’s a holdup in the Bronx,/ Brooklyn’s broken out in fights … ” Ask……

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The paradox of smalltown crime

By David Benjamin | 08/21/2024 | Comments Off on The paradox of smalltown crime

by David Benjamin “It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which……

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