Out in my kayak on Jordan Lake on Sunday, I made several dozen efforts to shoot a picture of a wave. This is not an ocean wave. It’s a lake wave on a fairly calm day; mostly it’s wake from a motorboat. But up close from a little rubber boat, such waves can look and […] Read More

Today’s the last day of my Big Bold Sale, after having cut my prices for manuscript critiques by 40% for these past four weeks of June. Now I’m reading and reading. I’m glad to be doing the work, and it’s nice to make a Bold Gesture and get big response. I’ve met some new writers […] Read More

I’m fond of cars that are highly personalized, having done shocking things to my own ’92 Camry, my “shabby chic” artcar. Last week, teaching at Meredith, I had the pleasure of parking next to an especially jaunty and charming one. Its owner, writer Beth Browne, bought it with its decorations already attached; however, it seemed […] Read More

Just slept 11 hours. The last week, with the five-day, nine-to-three workshop plus a few other things happening and coming due, was intense. When I woke up midday today, I thought: is there anything better than this? the luxury of lying here? A friend once said that she enjoyed being tired once she gave in […] Read More

Saying good-bye makes me nervous. Maybe it’s because it’s the last chance to have everything said, at least for a while. Today was the last of my 5-day workshop at Meredith on writing fiction. I’ve spent 35 hours with this group of writers in the last week, and, inevitably, we talk about some fairly intimate […] Read More

This week of teaching regular hours is both a break in my usual routines and a much more regimented new routine. The class day runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a nice lunch buffet at noon. Unlike my usual daily arrival at my office, I have to get to the classroom on time, […] Read More

Useful talk today in the writing workshop I’m leading this week at Meredith College–useful for me, as it happens. We were talking about writing dialogue, and the vocabulary and sentence construction that makes a person sound authoritative or timid. I said I use “I think…” too much before making my pronouncements while giving feedback on […] Read More

Second class day at the Meredith Writers Workshop. This afternoon we held the faculty readings. The three of us–poet Betty Adcock, novelist and memoirist Nancy Peacock, and I–all chatted and read for about 15 minutes each to an audience of the combined classes. I read the opening few pages of my novels Sister India and […] Read More

Sylvan setting; bold students.I’m teaching a one-week fiction-writing class for adults on the summer-lovely campus of Meredith College in Raleigh this week. Today was the first day. Sometimes people in a newly formed group hang back a little at being among the first to read from their work, or the first to comment on someone […] Read More

Van Jones, described as “a genius from the hood,” is founder of an environmental group called Green For All. He is aiming to “‘green the ghetto.'” A New Yorker article shows him giving a talk to a group of high school dropouts gathered in a public library. “‘I love Barack Obama,’ he said. ‘I’d pay […] Read More