Linda Hunt read her essay about winning an Oscar then and now on NPR last weekend. If you heard it you no doubt thought the essay came easily to her. Good writing usually looks easy. But her process in class was to read it, get feedback from the students (not always agreeing with the feedback) – then go off, mull it over, rewrite and read it again in class a few weeks later. She did this for months. And the essay just got better and better. In a town of crazed celebrity worship and hype, her thoughtful essay on Oscar “not being about you” was a beam of pure light and sanity.
Personal Essays
writing about place
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 1 Comment
A few weeks ago in the Escape section of the New York Times there was a wonderful essay by the actor William H. Macy about his cabin in Northern Vermont. He’d bought in the 80’s; tiny and lacking inside plumbing or electricity, it took him ten years to get to the plumbing. “But the days I spent working on that cabin gave me some of the purest pleasure I have ever known,” he writes. And he still loves it. “A little cabin in Vermont that fits me perfectly.” He writes about the moose who walked toward the cabin with him one night, six raccoons hanging on his bird feeder, going cross country skiing at midnight under a full moon, temperatures dropping to thirty below. Through what he loves and observes in the essay, you get a sense of him as well as the place. (Click the title to read the rest of the post…)
Terrific Books
a box of books: on being published
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 1 Comment
A box of books arrived today – my author copies of a new children’s book that will be officially published in June.
There’s a moment of such strangeness when you see your story in print as a book, a real book, not this vision that was in your head, but something you can hold and read and place on a book shelf. An actual object.
What was previously just an idea, so flakey that you were embarrassed for anyone to see the first few scribbled pages (anybody reading those early notes would know for sure you were crazy). Now here it is, complete with its little book jacket, carrying its own ISBN number, listed on Amazon, finally respectable, not at all crazy. Like an outlaw that’s gone straight. That’s what happens when you’re published. And it feels very strange.
Student Spotlight
student spotlight
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
I worry sometimes that I go on and on too much about my students. But I get so excited when they’re published, thrilled that they’ve had the courage and tenacity to stick with their writing, to rewrite and to put their work out there with all the risks of rejection. My worry struck me in a class of new students recently when I was telling them about all the amazing triumphs of previous students – novels being published, children’s books, and essays – lots and lots of published essays. I suddenly felt like one of those obnoxious mothers who reels off her children’s successes as listeners roll their eyes. So I asked my new class if they were getting really sick of me talking about this. To my surprise, they said no. They found it inspiring to hear about published students, it gave them the feeling that they too could do it. (Read more on WritingTime…)
Writing Advice
don’t be shy
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 1 Comment
We’re still finetuning this site and we’d like to hear from you. It’s easy. At the end of this post, you’ll notice these words:
Writing Advice, Permalink, Comments, Trackback
When you click on “Comments”, you will be taken to a page where you’ll see comments from other readers. Scroll down and you’ll find a comment form which asks you for your name, email, and gives you a place to post your comment.
You don’t need to enter your full name. Use just your first name, or whatever online handle you use.
Rather than use your primary email address, we suggest you create a secondary email account, which does not incorporate your name. This allows you to protect your privacy and to protect your “real” email accounts from possible spam attacks. You can go to Yahoo and set up a free email address in minutes.
Send us your thoughts and comments. The more we hear from you, the better we’ll be able to respond to your interests.
Personal Essays
close cousins of the personal essay
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
The personal essay has a family of close cousins – personal articles, columns, op-ed pieces, and letters to the editor….
Writing Advice
4 thoughts on 40 papers
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 4 Comments
Besides teaching “Writing the Personal Essay” for four days at the Writers Studio, I’m also finishing up a six week course I teach at UCLA Extension called “Courage & Craft”. So I’ve read a lot of student work in the past week. Here’s what stands out after teaching for thirty-five hours in five days and…
teaching writing
discipline and dailyness
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 2 Comments
At the end of every workshop I have my students write down their writing schedule for the next six or eight weeks, depending on how long the course has been. If you think of your writing schedule as a long, never ending march into time, it can seem daunting. But if you think, okay, for x number of weeks I’m going to write every day for x hours (or minutes) it becomes do-able. Getting started writing can be a stroll, not a marathon. But it does need to be disciplined, and not just something you do when you’re inspired. Getting inspired in order to write is like thinking all you need for marriage is lust. Like marriage or any long term relationship, dailyness is required for writing. Also devotion, patience, and determination.
To Do: Set yourself a goal for the next month, the next four weeks. An essay? A first chapter of a novel or memoir? Or just starting a journal? Realistically, what time do you have to write? Write it down on your calendar. Even if it’s fifteen minutes. Make a contract with yourself.
teaching writing
announcing … The Writing Room!
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
If you’re serious about your writing, but concerned that the daily chaos of life might make it difficult for you do the writing exercises, we have a possible solution: The Writing Room.
For readers interested in joining a writing group, we are testing The Writing Room, which will match people together in writing groups of 5 to 10. Each writing group will have its own private “writing room”, where writing group members can post their writing and give feedback to other members of the writing group.
You can click on “Join a Writing Group” in our navigation menu for more details, or click here.
The Writing Life
tiny rooms and no life style
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
The fact is that it’s lonely to write. Like Norman Mailer says, you don’t have a life style, you just sit in a little room and write. The rest of the world is out there acting like adults, wearing real clothes, making real money, hanging out with co-workers. Writing is about hanging around the house in your sweats, eating odd little snacks heated up in the microwave, talking to your cats/dog/the walls and checking your e-mail every other minute to feel connected to the real world even if it’s just electronically.
To continue reading this article and read this week’s Writing To Do, click on “Tiny Rooms” and you’ll be taken to the complete article.
teaching writing
just do it
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
So you’re sitting there reading this, your screen aglow, computer humming, and maybe you’re thinking someday I’ll start doing all this stuff. I’ll start writing. Or: someday I’ll go back to writing or: someday I’ll dig out that story I started and finish it.
To Do: Like that Nike ad said: Just do it. Open a new Word file, or pick up a pen right now. (click on the “Just Do It” title and you’ll be taken to Writing Time where you can read the rest of the exercise…)
teaching writing
a million journals
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 1 Comment
If you type in the words “keeping a personal journal” on Google, 1,020,000 entries will come up. These entries cover every subject you could think of (and more) for a journal – relationships, diets, Pilates, cooking, finance, travel, spiritual, sugar consumption, dreams, goal setting, bee keeping – including a list of the “Top 10 Miraculous Benefits of Keeping a Personal Journal”. For over a million entries and those miraculous benefits, you’d think there would be hordes of people keeping journals; that the whole planet would be full of people writing in notebooks day and night.
