Zoë’s and Anna’s thoughtful comments about the process of writing last week prompted me to think about how we choose what to write about, and how we go about writing it. Do you tend to […]
Themes
I’m Not Going To Write You A Love Song
Or write him a song if you are so inclined. 12th Street got an interesting email this morning and we wanted to pass it along to you, our audience. We encourage you to speak you […]
Hooked On A Feeling
I cannot tell a lie: I was not always a supporter of Barack Obama, our new president elect. Early on in what has proven to be one of the longest presidential campaigns in American history, […]
Children of Our Era
We are children of our era;
our era is political.
Four years ago, I was old enough to vote in my first presidential election. I was living with my parents. I had to brave the terrors of going back to my old high school to cast my ballot. I wore my “I VOTED” sticker all day and into the night, waiting for the results that would validate my efforts and prove that I had made a difference. And then I was crushed.
Breaking Our Expectations
Does an addict have to be a bad person? Zoe Miller asks how to break the expectations when creating a character.
"I’m As Mad As Hell, and I’m Not Going To Take This Anymore": Does That Make Me Sexist?
Some of you may know that my title comes from the 1976 film Network. The movie exposes the media’s failure to report how Americans really feel during times of war and upheaval and what they […]
Really? No shortcut?
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” […]
Could It Be Writer’s Block?
Hypergraphia is the overwhelming urge to write. According to neurosurgeon Alice Flaherty, author of The Midnight Disease, this urge is triggered by changes in brainwave activity in the temporal lobe. Writers such as Dostoevsky and Lewis Carroll […]
Plumbing Further
My post last week, “Plumbing the Issues,” has raised what I think is a very welcome discussion because it is an important one. Two readers commented. The first discussed my remarks about people who I […]
Word v. Intent
It was only last Spring that Senator Obama enlightened us about the characteristics of Pennsylvanians, saying, “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the […]