I “teach” writing. I put that in quotes because I can’t really teach it. What I can do is encourage people, I can point out where your writing needs more detail, or less, and what the potential of your story might be. I can offer guidelines to what a personal essay should attempt to…
Terrific Books
Terrific Books
Publishing and Finding Your Voice as a Writer
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 18 Comments
J.D. Salinger, who cherished his privacy, died last week and all the newspapers were quoting his famous comment about publishing: “There is marvelous peace in not publishing. .….Publishing is a terrible invasion of privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” Verlyn Klinkenborg…
Terrific Books
Things You’d Never Tell Another Soul
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 8 Comments
“And so I began to write about things I thought I would never tell another soul as long as I lived…” These words begin the last paragraph of May-lee Chai’s beautiful and moving memoir Hapa Girl which I just finished reading. Her opening sentence is also gripping: “When we first moved to South Dakota,…
Terrific Books, The Writing Life
The Cell Phone: Chapter Two
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 13 Comments
I turned in that tarty red Samsung that I couldn’t figure out – feeling even dumber when I tried to read the manual – and I bought an iPhone. I’m in love with it. In love. I understand all you iPhone users now. I was trying to be frugal but there comes a…
Terrific Books
Reading a Book a Day for 365 Days
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 8 Comments
This is what Nina Sankovitch (above) did – read a whole book every single day. She also found time to review each book on her blog. Everyday. And it wasn’t like she lived alone in a cave or anything – she lives in a house in Connecticut with a husband and four children. And…
Terrific Books
Resilience
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 8 Comments
Though slightly put off by the hype of Elizabeth Edward’s television book tour a few months ago, I nevertheless ordered Resilience, her book with the dreadful self-help subtitle of: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities. I teach a course called “Writing the Healing Story” and also do workshops at the…
Terrific Books
Cowboy & Wills
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 5 Comments
Today is publication day for Cowboy & Wills, a memoir by my dear friend and student Monica Holloway (whose last book Driving With Dead People was a Newsweek pick of the week, optioned for a film etc.). Monica has the amazing talent to take the most difficult subjects and write about them with depth,…
Terrific Books
PEN 2009 Literary Award Winners
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 8 Comments
The PEN awards were announced this morning in a press release and now I can tell you who won the creative non-fiction award: Steve Lopez for The Soloist. There were three of us judging this category and our emails back and forth to each other about the sixty books we had to choose from…
Terrific Books
Frank McCourt
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 7 Comments
I heard Frank McCourt give a reading from Angela’s Ashes at the Palos Verdes Estates Library a number of years ago. His wife’s family lived in Palos Verdes. and it felt like a small town get together in that old library. He was incredibly charming and funny and inspiring. (Not all writers you might admire…
Terrific Books
The Best Gig
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 7 Comments
I was asked to be a judge for a literary award ceremony and I said yes. The books in competition arrived two weeks ago. All sixty of them. So many books that there’s no place in the house to put them so they’re all stacked on the bench in the front hallway. It’s like…
