Off the Shelf: Writers on Writing
- 1
A writer finds that his fictional lark has been turned into a reality by someone else.
- 2
Have we suddenly become a nation of liars? Or have we just forgotten that there’s a limit to what we call nonfiction?
- 3
A writer’s experience of teaching the craft of writing behind bars.
- 4
When I was researching my nonfiction book “The Lost Art of Walking,” I came across this wonderful comic passage in P.G.
- 5
A mystery novelist encounters a real whodunit.
- 6
When publishers seemed a bit cool on his book proposal, Steve Almond made up his mind: He’d do it himself.
- 7
2010 marks a few anniversaries and an auspicious time to get reacquainted with one of America’s most beloved writers.
- 8
Writer Steve Oney spent decades researching the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan and the subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, but his voluminous files now belong to history.
- 9
Judging by the ‘Liar’ controversy, ethnicity is a no-no on young adult book covers.
- 10
As she sets a story in the world of high school, a writer wonders: Should it be based on her own experience or something else entirely?
- 11
The reasons why one writer’s self-explorations take fictional form.
- 12
The writer of the Special Agent Ana Grey mysteries went in search of a (fake) firearm for a photo shoot in New York and came across more trouble than she had bargained for.
- 13
‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ and the like are literary concoctions that have momentary entertainment value, but the masterpieces that spawned them will live on.
- 14
An author gets a dose of small-town ‘show biz’ while on book tour.
- 15
In Cuba to post dispatches for an online magazine and act as a guide for Mariel Hemingway, the actress who was born shortly after her grandfather’s death, the author gets a shiny surprise.
- 16
A partnership of poets has always seemed right to her. The alternative would’ve been like something out of a Jay McInerney novel.
- 17
A poet in search of the proper form for his self-expression.
- 18
To the fervent reader and writer, the words on a page encompass the whole wide world and their place in it.
- 19
Yes, the history, culture and countryside are to be savored, but why let them come between you and a good book?
- 20
“ ‘I must not,’ said Jane, ‘think of rats.’ And proceeded to think of them as hard as she could.”
- 21
A writer gets lost in a nonfiction no man’s land.
- 22
A teething baby interrupts the flow of words that come only with sleep. What’s a writer to do?
- 23
Is there a subtle art to the way we inscribe books for others? You bet there is.
- 24
The making of a memoir: ‘Slow Motion.’
- 25
Author’s trip through the Atlas Mountains reminds her how women who don’t fit typical gender roles are undermined by men -- and by other women
- 26
There’s something about traveling outside your comfort zone, Mark Haskell Smith believes, that can set off a writer’s radar.
- 27
A writer’s meditation on a Japanese poet-priest springs from an unexpected, private source of inspiration.
- 28
Why one writer can’t turn down any assignments.
- 29
What do they really do with all that time?
- 30
How one writer found a valuable expression of her identity in a letter.
- 31
She may not yet be supple or limber, still or steady, or calm, but the more sessions she attended, the more she changed.
- 32
Gone are the days of meandering through the dictionary. But gone too is the serendipity of finding other great words while meandering.
- 33
With social networking tools today, there is simply no getting away.
- 34
At least 25 years later, the fantasy game still provides an escape.
- 35
A writer remembers her childhood writing room in Iran.
- 36
Is there anything worse than writing your second novel?
