Thinking about mentors and what they’ve meant to me, I came across an essay by Joyce Carol Oates, In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters, from this Fall’s issue of Narrative. (You have to create an account, but you can read the article for free.) I was…

From the start of The Writers Circle, I made it my weekly habit to share interesting readings about writing, publishing and the writing life. The very first one, I recall, was Francine Prose’s Atlantic Monthly article “Close Reading” which introduced the core topics of her…

Just a quick note as some of you have asked about paying fees for entering literary contests. Yes, in the old days, paying fees to enter would’ve been a sure sign of a scam. (And it’s still absolutely verboten for a legitimate literary agent to…

I came across several writing contests that look really intriguing: Narrative’s FALL CONTEST is open to all fiction and nonfiction writers. They’re looking for short shorts, short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works of…

I’m pleased to introduce our first guest blogger on The Writers Circle, historical novelist Michelle Cameron, the author of “The Fruit of Her Hands“. “Connecting with Other Writers” My son, a somewhat arrogant aspiring writer of 19, tells me that writing blog entries is going…

In a fascinating look-back on the way things were, publishing icon Joni Evans muses on simpler times in her article, When Publishing Had Scents and Sounds. Her descriptions of the editorial office of the 1970s completely suit my romantic notions. But oh, how things have…

Writers should take courage from Elizabeth Gilbert’s candid revelation that she scraped an entire 500-page manuscript following the success of her bestselling “Eat, Pray, Love”. It’s not uncommon – the stifling anxiety that comes with any measure of success, and the palette cleansing that’s required…

How lovely! As I’ve been taking a bit of time off from teaching and therefore from blogging, the virtual world nonetheless seems interested in what I have to say! My blog-post from late May, The Storyteller’s Fire, is today’s featured post on Backspace’s terrific new…

I’m pleased and honored to be this week’s guest blogger on Christina Baker Kline‘s terrific blog, A Writing Year. Check out my piece about researching a historical novel: Judith Lindbergh on Raising the Dead. And also be sure to check out Christina’s latest novel, Bird…

In Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood, he writes “Childhood is a branch of cartography.” Chabon muses about the long passages of time when, as a child, he was able to roam free, inventing his own reality as much as exploring it,…

Poetry can feel, at times, as rarified as air, precious for its purity, its essentialness, its glittering, fluid, whimsical magnificence. It gives weight to simplicity and simplicity to weight, nourishing on levels more ephemeral and yet more visceral than prose. As I write my novels,…

As an inverse response to my June 16 post, “Beginnings”, Chris Harder just sent me the 2009 winners in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to write the worst opening sentence. Sometimes writing badly can be just as hard as writing well. (Well, let’s hope so,…