In the midst of widespread debates about the national minimum wage and the ethics of unpaid internships, where does the striving writer feature? I’ve been struggling to define my own boundaries as a professional and a volunteer. An eager artist with plenty (too much?) to say, I tend to shout “yes!” to opportunities first and…
America is a mosaic of special interest groups. Dysfunctional examples are political parties. Coffee klatches and bowling leagues serve as benign instances of voluntary associations. Hobbyists congregate around pastimes such as stamp collecting, photography, and scrapbooking. Then there are detectorists who diligently scan patches of ground with mechanisms designed to signal the presence of metallic…
Two weeks ago I took a workshop through International Thriller Writers from Lisa Unger who was describing her career as an author, including the 20-something books she’s written and I was suddenly struck by the fact that given my age and my career trajectory, there’s no way I will ever write that many books in…
My father and mother planted me in the middle of the dense woods in the Adirondack foothills. My childhood was spent staring up into maples, birches, oaks, firs, and even some plucky apple trees that had scrambled onto our land from nearby orchards. I grew up believing that trees embodied wisdom and that likewise, leaves…
The Short Story: I write short stories because that’s how stories come to me: vivid, brimming with life, but short. I’ll be frying an egg or replanting a philodendron or washing a window and voila—a scene or story pops full-blown into my head, complete with backdrop, character, dialog, bit players, and a bit of arc….