by Ellen Baker

Quiet. I’m lying in the October sun on the deck of my just-rented cottage in storybook Castine, Maine, a coastal village of white clapboard houses and a glistening harbor surrounded by elms and maples dressed in their fall colors.

So quiet. Every writer’s dream?

I’m clenching my teeth.

by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

—Robert Frost

Robert Frost’s words point to the foundation of all good writing:  the writer’s open heart. A writer’s willingness to be moved by his or her work is an invitation to the Muse; it is a free, exploratory state that allows what’s hidden in the recesses of our being—ideas, imaginative worlds, unanswered questions, psychological battles, memories—to emerge. What lurks in the private unconscious also lurks in the collective unconscious, and so the work that bubbles up when a writer puts pen to page is a glimpse, however brief, of the great mystery of being human. We writers must enter into relationship with this mystery, in one of its trillions of guises. Only then do tears and surprises—the transformation of both the writer and the text—become possible.

by Jonathan Odell

In life, you can either live out of your imagination,

or you can live out of your history. ~Stephen Covey

That’s what we adults do with much of our lives. We live out of our history, doing the things that have worked once upon a time. We obey the rules. We avoid the things that didn’t work while stubbornly refusing to imagine a new story for ourselves.

One of my favorite quotes about childhood is from Graham Greene: “There is always one moment in a child’s life when the door opens and lets the future in.”

by Burt Berlowe

blatantnews

The epiphany came to me 40 years ago amidst the flashing neon, echoing chants, and quiet drizzle of a historic Times Square afternoon. In that powerful moment, as I marched with people from around the country who had come together to walk their antiwar talk, I moved from interested spectator to active participant in the peace movement.

In the days that followed, that transformative moment became story. I put on paper what I had observed, experienced, and felt, and imagined what might be the stories of the others who rode on the bus, camped in the church, and marched through downtown New York in an awesome display of commitment and purpose. Thousands of compelling stories were unfolding that day, and I wished I could somehow know them all and tell them to a larger world. Although I didn’t label it as such at the time, I was yearning to be a story carrier.

by Lindsay Nielsen

Were you dying as I passed the Lake Harriet bench where we always met? As I breathed in the morning air colored by the sunrise, were you exhaling your last? Were you already gone when I woke during the night realizing I needed to drop a note off at your house? Because even though you weren’t feeling well enough to talk, I wanted to let you know one more time how much I admired you, how permanently your quiet presence had become part of my heart. Maybe you’ve gone to a place where you still have some form of consciousness, some kind of ability to watch your children grow and have children of their own. I hope by the end you came to understand how much you affected the world by your very being.

by Pete Hautman

About 30 years ago, publishers discovered that sending their authors on “book tours” was a good way to sell books. It wasn’t really a new idea—Mark Twain was an intrepid tourer—but it was not until the 1980s that touring became a standard publisher’s strategy for building an author’s “brand.” Booksellers loved it. Author appearances brought people into their stores—even authors nobody had ever heard of. The strategy worked. For a while.

by Martin Cozza

You are lucky. You get to take off work and write for two months, thanks to a grant and to your spouse, who’s off for the summer and can watch the kids all day. You’ve started a novel, and it’s going pretty well. You rent a writers’ studio at the Loft, since you have to get out of the house. And you can ride your bike to the Loft—no parking worries. You have time! You have space! You have a project to work on! You are lucky! Yes!

by Athena Kildegaard

I first loved my husband in the fall of 1979, and I’ve been loving him again and again ever since. All that time I’ve written poetry, but until January first this year I’d written only a handful of love poems.

That curious pair of facts began to needle me in early December last year. Driving from here to there I thought about a love poem by Dorianne Laux I’d read that morning, how true and necessary it was and how unwrought it seemed. That thinking led me to wonder why I’d written so few love poems over the years. I realized that I was just plain afraid of writing them.

Interview by Dara Syrkin

During her 1999 Bush Fellowship for midcareer physicians, Maggie O’Connor dedicated 10 percent of her time to learning how to write. “I had terrible writer’s anxiety. I chose my college classes based on which ones required the fewest essays. English 101 gave me stomach cramps. I decided I had grown up. The time had come to deal with my anxiety about writing.”

Fear or no, Maggie embraced the newness of writing. “My dad started weaving when he retired. So when I set out for the Loft with my guts quaking, I had the reassurance that old people can learn. I sat in classes and introduced myself as a science and math jock who wanted to learn how to write. One of the wonderful things about being a beginner is that you are free to ask any question.

by Eugénie de Rosier

It was a grand task to take up the humanitarian challenge of Peace Corps work for 27 months in Southeast Asia. Whew! It was great to come home in May 2008, but not so fine to be faced with the chore of a job search in our slumped economy. Nonetheless, I started a disciplined and organized effort in June.

Seventeen months later, in December 2009, I was still without full-time employment and had been wrestling with writing fiction full time. I’d made a commitment to writing twice and did so for two weeks each time. Downbeat newspaper articles or national labor statistics affected me and I returned to networking. Not seeking paid employment was scary.