An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
I was reading a personal essay by a writer with her debut about to drop. She’d always dreamed of a purely literary life as a college professor, perhaps, who wrote in the evenings and weekends, during the breaks between terms. It was the lifestyle she thought she wanted. Instead, she had worked during recent years in a grocery store. She didn’t mind the work and interacted daily with dozens of other people. When she clocked out of work, she moved straight on to the writing and finished her memoir.
She still envied friends and fellow MFA graduates with work teaching at universities and colleges. Then she noted that they were badly paid, poorly treated, worked for hours past their “workday” and often between jobs. They struggled to find time and energy to write.
I bought a flat of primroses a couple of years ago. This one is still blooming. A survivor.Continue reading →
I had an idea of where I was going when I started Part 1, but that got lost. The most magical thing I do is writing—making a reality that hadn’t existed before I created it. I think it through. I trust the process to yield.
The dawn, the dawning of an idea, the beginning that is colorful enough to foreshadow an ending. All begins with the best of intentions for meaning, the hope that completion makes an understandable whole.Continue reading →
Over the years I’ve experienced many unbelievable things. People have said things to me that were so shocking, I didn’t know how to respond. Then I did. I’ve given up all hope. Surprise! Things fall into place.
These are fabrics from my quilting stash. The ones at the top—the persimmon with swirls of dark chocolate and white at left and the yellow ochre with other colors spinning across are what I’ve always hoped would become anchoring fabrics. I’ve thought that for at least fifteen years, maybe fourteen yards, some of the patterns very rare, all hand dyed. The yardage has waited a long time, and pretty soon I will begin piecing. The stack at left will be one side, the stack at right will be the reverse. I will work from the middle with a center diamond and piece my way to the edges. I’m hoping I won’t need to purchase another cotton batt but can use leftovers I have stashed.Continue reading →
A lot. My injured foot is still a problem. No publisher for my novel. We’ve canceled an anniversary vacation. A neighbor is not doing well. And I am assured by a former student that, “There is hope in this world, ya know. And it’s okay to get depressed; it just means you’re paying attention. And while anyone is still paying attention, there is still hope for everyone who is not.” Walking, submission, altruism, A Christmas Carol, righteousness, and hope. The ocean of my business.
A couple of weeks ago on a trial 1-mile walk that went well.Continue reading →
You write. You submit. You wait. You are rejected.
Only that first verb matters. Remember that. Keep going.
You write. You submit. You wait for rejection. It is tempting to believe in failure, that rejection is deserved, that it is right.
Every creative person knows this process of making and reworking and finishing, and then sharing and waiting and hoping for appreciation. We all know disappointment. Those of us in MFA programs, those sitting alone behind a desk, with a notebook on our lap, everyone with a dream of finding an audience, even those with an audience waiting and eager to read our words. We focus on we have to share, bring on every skill we have practiced, but fear our audience will not remain seated. Even our mother will lose interest.
We envy people who never doubt. We doubt.
It is tempting to believe that others never doubt themselves, that someone somewhere is writing better stories and essays and poetry, that readers respond with the same passion that writer felt while writing, that their work is snapped right up. And maybe you’ve had work that was snapped right up. Maybe you have published poetry or fiction or essays that someone somewhere told you they loved. Maybe they even told you why. Or maybe they never did. Not once.
Either way, you doubt. You write. You submit. You wait. You are rejected. Each time you start over. You want to believe others are not good enough, but you are perfect, and then hubris drops its calling card and you know you are lost. Envy scars your work, plants its ugly face between you and what you love.
It is tempting to believe that maybe this rejection is all you have, that the essay or memoir or poem or story you wrote isn’t good enough. You should revise it, set it aside for a time and revisit it, rearrange the paragraphs or stanzas, make a stronger opening, invent a new word, wrap your thoughts in metaphor or scene, reconsider what you think you are writing about. Maybe you thought this piece was about love and really it’s about hope or loss or—heaven help you—giving up.
It is tempting to give up.
You write about giving up. You write until you find the next story or scene, the new essay or poem. You find a line or a single word. And then you fall right back into writing. Hours go by, and you laugh at the memory, the paradox, the irony written before you, the odd turn of phrase, the way a character or idea does something you hadn’t expected. You might cry when you find your own blood staining the page, or laugh all over again from pure glory. You polish the line until you realize it is too shiny and you must allow the next line to shine brighter. Hotter. You might stay up too late, revise those lines a hundred times, stir that emotional pot while it boils. You might get burned, but even the rising steam belongs to you. You work with sound until the words reveal what you knew all along. You have something to say.
You glow with effort and accomplishment. You said it, you wrote it, you made it clear on the page. Hold on to this. You hold on.
You write. You submit. You wait. You are rejected.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
The response you are waiting for does not arrive.
It is tempting to believe you are wasting your time and your energy and your very heart on an endeavor that you were never meant to pursue. You want to believe that someone somewhere needs your words. You fear you are wrong. It is tempting to believe you will never write better than this. Maybe, you think, I should stop. You are not good enough. Maybe it is a delusion to trust your words matter to anyone anywhere. Maybe it was never important, what you write and try so earnestly to share. You do not have it, whatever it is that is found wanting.
You want it.
It is tempting to decide that laughter —yours—and tears—yours—are small things. They’re not. It is tempting to dismiss your accomplishment. It towers over your head, this dismissal. It is a momentous thing like sliding off a mountain peak. When you found the right word, the right sound, the piece that finally fits—there is triumph in that instant before you begin to doubt.
Remember. You have struggled. You have discovered. You have created a new thing entirely your own.
Remember the process, the laughter and tears and precision. Maybe you forgot that it was the writing you loved best of all. Maybe you forgot why it matters most of all.
You wrote this. It is yours. It is important to you.
Remember that precious verb: write. Set aside submitting, waiting, rejection. Maybe those next three verbs give you nothing good, only judgment and disappointment. You are better than that.
Only that first word is good for us. We deserve to write. We need to have the last word about the value of our work.
Heroes aren’t my thing—I resist heroics, but I do have a few people I hold in my heart. Sojourner Truth is always the first. Many authors. Many people I’ve never met. And Kylene, who I met and then followed online for thirty years. She was an inspiration to me and many other teachers—the only academic I’ve ever met who gave precedence to actual teaching.
Over the years, I took too many education classes and workshops from people who failed to practice what they were teaching. Kylene Beers continued to teach kids while teaching teachers and serving as editor of an NCTE publication. It can’t have been easy.
Kylene Beers was the real deal. She practised what she preached. All honor to her life. She died yesterday. September 16, 1957 – June 20, 2025
We’ve been having an exciting spring so far, which reminds me of that Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. It’s an English translation of a genuine Chinese curse, but I heard it when I was still quite young, perhaps in my 20s. Wikipedia reminds us of the obvious that the “expression is ironic: ‘interesting’ times are usually times of trouble.” I would add complication and challenge. Today’s interesting times mostly seem concerned with graft and bullying and self-aggrandizement. Alas, I am not the one profiting, gaining power, or advancing my image.
My best time was eight minutes and some seconds per mile (maybe more than thirty, but not much) over highway hills in the rain. I was a lot younger then, had been training for a half marathon in Seattle, and that fast run on steep hills resulted in injury.
But that’s not what we meant, is it?
We want my best time on vacation or during sex, or whatever. My best time as a writer. My best time writing or weaving or knitting or playing with my children.
Sunsets are always pretty. We like the magenta and orange ones but also the palest gilt edges under horizon clouds.Continue reading →
I was asked for advice about teaching fiction in a 12-week term. Over the years, I’ve been asked to design curriculum many times, usually by administrators who have never actually done that and don’t appreciate (or care?) the amount of work involved. I have never been paid and rarely even receive a thank-you for doing this. The work is consuming and exhausting, and I should have learned by now to say no, but I always do it. It’s interesting to me.
Though I was discouraged from teaching fiction, I assigned fiction every term I taught. Telling stories is what makes us human.
You might teach people how to write fiction this way:
Consider at the outset, how much homework, how much work you are willing to read as a teacher. Draft at least some of the writing in a writing fiction class by hand on paper. There is a difference once you type into a computer. Refuse to accept work that has been drafted using AI*. Watch students begin. Require all drafts be turned in. Do many very short low-stakes fragments and scenes. Explore craft, particularly considering sentence structure and tone, dialogue and scene, the magic that happens. Use the shorter assignments and reading to get to this. Advise students to watch for the assignment that gets away from them.
I have taught a workshop for teachers called “How to Teach Writing Without Making Your Eyes Bleed.” The title comes from an excellent AP teacher whose eyes literally bled every spring before her students took the AP test. Since I was teaching as many as 200 students at a time as a high school teacher (never that many teaching college classes), I have strategies. Among those: Grade writing only after it has been through revision. Grade only after work has been typed.
Outline everything they will have done by the end of term and share this with your students. Reassure them that your goal is not to turn them all into published writers (you won’t). Your goal is to help them to become better at story-telling and to understand what makes a story work for readers. Publication is another thing altogether. Most MFA graduates have learned nothing about publication.
Begin with an assigned short fiction. A 300-500-word fable works well because it fits single-spaced on a page and has very specific conventions, which relieves students from having to invent the wheel, so to speak. State the moral at the end. [It’s important to note that I read hundreds of their fables and they were always good.] I required MLA form for this assignment. I usually threw my students a twist or two for the second draft: add dialogue or change the point of view to first person. Usually both. I marked the stories for errors and required them to revise until the story was free of error—with no penalty if they needed another seven drafts to get there. If you keep it single-spaced on one page, it is entirely manageable to staple previous drafts behind. Assume three drafts or ten. This assignment will ensure everyone understands how to set up their pages and gives you a good overview of their skills (or lack thereof). Having them write the first draft in class may make sussing the AI-users easier.*
Throughout the term, have them read many good writers: Assign what you know will demonstrate the techniques you value in fiction. This is a discussion topic for one class period each week: read the assigned text and discuss it in class (a short story in the public domain works—check what they can find online, and if necessary make them read it in class and respond the same day).
Another series of weekly assignments might be the ones from Ursula K. Le Guin’s craft book, Steering the Craft—you can read each assignment aloud or require students purchase the text, which has a ton of great information! [I have created my own ten assignments geared to nonfiction writing.] I can recommended Stephen King’s craft book, which might be better than his novels. There are others.
Microfictions of 250 words ±25, can be tailored to emphasize specific skills such as POV or lists or conversation or scene. One due each week with a particular craft or scenario for each and including a specific word. For example: Tell a story with two people in a car driving to an event and one of them has a secret they want to tell, include the work “mask.” I had the class choose the “magic words” they must include because it gives them some ownership. They might write one each week for most of the term (10 in a 12-week class) or just eight. Stamp them as “completed on schedule” and then they turn them in all at once for credit, with a lengthened story stapled at the front—the only one graded.
All the above might be 50% of their grade for the term. Include discussions and peer editing of the first writing and of the longer one.
As a last assignment, a longer story of 4000-5000 or 2500-3500, ±2000, or even a flash fiction of ≤1000 words. This final story is the necessary goal, but find a way to be flexible if someone finds they cannot write to your required length. Maybe the story must be longer, or very short? For this assignment, I urge requiring Modern Manuscript Format (Shunn), which is standard for fiction and nonfiction submissions. There are many options concerning how you assign a short story and what you require. Be as flexible as possible. Good stories, in my experience, are born of pure magic. You can’t demand magic and we sometimes throw up out hands concerning how to start. You might suggest:
Begin with a true story you make more dramatic or set elsewhere;
choose familiar traditional story such as a fairytale, rewritten to take place here and now;
rewrite a news piece that makes you wonder and then create backstory and afterward;
examine a problem and solve it in the story;
expand a micro by complicating it or exploring more of that story;
develop an in-class writing based on Chris Van Allsburg’s illustration in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. [find a used copy or individual illustrations online—or have students find any one of them and write a story for which the drawing is an illustration;
or just allow the short piece that’s getting away from you to grow, the voice that will not stop telling you their story, the question you find demands answering by showing you what happens but insists you get down every darned detail.
Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick offers wonderful illustrations from an imaginary book. There is a collection of stories by famous authors based on these illustrations.
Evaluating a short story in-class might serve as a midterm or final, if you need one. You might offer students the choice of how to prove their skill by giving them a bad story to improve and/or explain why it’s not good and how it could be better. There are plenty of general “rules” about writing short fiction. Alice Munro deliberately and magnificently breaks most of them in her early collection, Friends of My Youth.
Some of the suggested assignment include what we now mostly call speculative or genre fiction. If that’s not your comfort zone, don’t go there. Stick to realist stories. Do what makes sense to you.
About drafts: Teach them drafting/revising to the point where the author is stuck, and to seek peer editing (or workshop), and revision right from the beginning. Most new writers will not have workshopped a story. Teach them to be gentle with one another. Point out that one gift of reading others’ work is recognizing what works and doesn’t and then applying those insights to our own writing. Remind them that creation involves risk, but that what is obvious to one person is invisible to another. Help them see more.
Workshopping: The goal for the reader is to express admiration of what works, ask questions to clarify confusion, and perhaps suggest where they want more or less on the page. It is not the reader’s job to “fix” anything; that is up to the writer. [Even editors who are very good at finding where work is needed are not helpful in telling the writer how to accomplish that work—though they will try—that work must remain in the writer’s hands.] You will have the occasional student who believes their first draft is perfect, every single time. They need to accept that they are wrong about that.
You may quote me: No one writes a perfect first draft. No one gets it right the first time, not even after hours of work on that first draft. We need to put that wonderful “perfect” draft away for a while, and then look at it with our own fresh eyes. There isn’t time in a course to do that properly, but even a day or two of not looking helps. After hard work and many drafts and setting it aside and workshopping (peer editing for adults) and staring at it till our eyes bleed (famous quote), we might get there.
Go online and search “How to workshop fiction?” you’ll find plenty of advice. The standard is everyone reads the text or the author does aloud, and then the author is silent while the group responds. The response is not thumbs up but a careful appreciation and evaluation: what works and what isn’t done. Yet. [That “yet” can hurt. Keep it in mind when offering feedback.]
Teach alternative chronology:
Teach the traditional plot triangle and why no one writes stories structured like that anymore;
warn about expository lumps;
teach the work of a scene, which has a person or people in a particular time doing something, even standing still and tapping their foot’s a reason for a scene—by establishing and revealing character, motivation, information, conflict—establishing, escalating, turning—and in this way moves the story forward;
likewise, every description contributes to our understanding of the story because how the flowers bloom or fade suggests the overall arc and mood of the fiction;
start the story with a scene pulled from the middle of action;
cut the first page (or four) of a story (this is sometimes “throat-clearing”);
and remind them that hack-and-slash butchery of their own work often makes it stronger because the author always knows more about their story that they put on the page.
One final point: This is a personal bug of mine. Bring bad work to workshop if it’s the best you have, because we all get stuck, can’t see our forest for the trees, need help. But first read the story aloud (if you stumble over a word or phrase try to figure out how to fix that). Then read it to someone or to the dog or the bathroom mirror. Bringing bad work to workshop is forgivable. Most of us write bad stuff before we get to the good. Bringing work that you haven’t already done what you can, at that time, is annoying. If we haven’t already read it aloud, checked for and repaired typos, ensured the story fits the assignment (save it for another time if it doesn’t), we are abusing our readers. Do not abuse your readers. Give them the best you can, even if you know it’s not good. Yet. Listen to what the readers say, find your own solutions. Have patience. Write another fifty drafts.
I was asked to design a 12-week class, and thought it was odd because in college, classes are usually in semesters (15 weeks) or quarters (10 weeks). And then I wrote most of this and set it off. No word from the person who asked. Not the first time I’ve been asked for help and heard nothing back.
*A former student who is a tenured professor tells their students that if it sounds to them as if the work was written by AI, regardless of whether it is or not, they will receive a D for the assignment. We don’t want our fiction manufactured by technology or sounding as if it were.
