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.
Write Away Essays:
Write Away — #13 Among the commonest—and most perplexing—comments I encounter when talking to readers at a book talk is: “I never read fiction.” I understand that reading nonfiction, about history, political science, economics, etc., carries an “educational” cachet, casting upon the reader a glow of seriousness. By contrast, then, fiction is somehow frivolous, a……
Read More...The road to bitterness When I was in tenth grade, I developed an infatuation with James Drought, an author whose yellow-backed Avon paperback, The Secret, I found on a revolving rack at the drugstore. Drought’s autobiographical novel—more of an extended diatribe—exuded the sort of educated rage and gloom that appealed to a cautiously rebellious and……
Read More...by David Benjamin When I began writing essays, I took advantage of a captive market. I was both editor and a multifaceted reporter for a Massachusetts weekly, The Mansfield News. Both to gratify the urge to express myself and to fill the great white void of column inches in each issue, I assigned myself three……
Read More...The gateway to publication and success as a writer is the “literary agent.” There are hundreds of these, mostly in New York City and each harboring strongly held “genre” preferences. This edition of Write Away illuminates the unsubtle art of rejection by literary agencies, a baptism of blood that every aspiring author must eventually encounter.……
Read More...As the benefactor of a scholarship competition for young writers at my alma mater, La Follette High School in Madison, I have a chance, at least once a year to converse with promising young writers. I cheer them on, but also worry about the challenges they face if they expect their talent to bestow fame……
Read More...This issue of Write Away derives from a presentation I’ve given several times to young writers. There are many habits, some of them peculiar to a particular writer, that a storyteller learns and then cultivates. The seven I’ve listed here are—or ought to be—universal. The seven keys of storytelling A question every author hears is……
Read More...This issue of Write Away examines a quandary: Why is there a Southern school of literature, but no equivalent Midwestern pantheon? It is arguable that the heartland has produced more great storytellers than any region in America. Why doesn’t the midwest get any respect? The Midwest: American Literature’s Diaspora Among a hundred threads of American……
Read More...The Ember of Anger When I was still muddling with my prose in high school, there was a big trend in the literary world for the sort of writer referred to as the “angry young man.” (Note that no market existed whatsoever for “angry young women.” The closest I might possibly cite in those days……
Read More...As a young writer, a dilemma that troubled me was characters. I was busily writing sketches populated by imaginary people. But I wondered, are these guys, and girls, characters? Had I “developed” them, or did they just pop into my head, like visions of Milky Way bars and the Playmate of the Month? Since then,……
Read More...A novelist’s guide to dining in Paris One advantage of writing fantasy fiction is that you get to make up an entire world, with made-up heroes, damsels, villains, dragons, and an imaginary history. No fussy editor or reader can fact-check your backstory or expose your topographical blunders. On the other hand, when setting a story……
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