The Fullness of Omission
The author of The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story explores what is gained by cutting elements of a narrative.
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Craft Capsules
In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.
The Erotics of Brevity
The author of The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story ponders the seductive power of laconic prose.
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Storytelling in Poetry
The author of What Can I Tell You?: Selected Poems examines poetic approaches to narrative.
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Vernacular Currency
The author of What Can I Tell You?: Selected Poems explores the poetic potential of vernacular language.
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Disturbing the Lyric “I”
The author of What Can I Tell You?: Selected Poems considers how lyric poetry may communicate beyond the realm of private experience.
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In Defense of Interiority and Backstory
The author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling considers how best to get into characters’ heads.
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When to Break the Rules
The author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling explores fiction’s holy commandments—and when a writer has license to defy them.
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Openness to Influence
The author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling argues that writers should be as open to influence during revision as they are at the beginning of a project.
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Ten Ways of Being in the Weeds With Your Novel, and Ten Ways Out
The author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling counts the many ways a novelist may get lost, but ultimately find a way through, a book project.
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The Quotidian and the Code
The author of The White Mosque troubles the boundary between realist and genre fiction.
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Old Verdurin in His Frock Coat: On Literature’s Found Objects
The author of The White Mosque considers how writing holds space for the accidental, the random, and the stray.
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Fiat Lux: On Literary Atmospheres
The author of The White Mosque charts the ambience of literary worlds.
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Blessed Citation
The author of The White Mosque offers an ode to intertextuality.
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Real Person, Imagined Scene
The author of Selected Books of the Beloved investigates the uses of specificity in narrative poetry.
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Story Dynamics in Poetry
The author of Selected Books of the Beloved illuminates the power of narrative to move a poem forward.
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Some Things I Like About Lists
The author of Selected Books of the Beloved explores enumeration as a source of poetic possibility.
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Sound Clusters
The author of Selected Books of the Beloved reflects on the sonic pleasures of verse and offers an exercise in attending to poetry’s music.
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Involuntary Ideas
The author of Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation reflects on the importance of letting the mind wander to release blocked creativity.
An Authentic Conversation With Your Reader
The author of Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation considers the link between the author’s emotional state while writing and the reader’s engagement.
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Your Reader and the Unconscious
The author of Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation offers a psychoanalytic approach to imagining the reader.
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Write It Again
The author of Took House explores what happens when poets permit themselves to write about the same subject multiple times.
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Make It Strange
The author of Took House explores the importance of “strangeness” in poetry and offers a method for capturing this quality by combining two different draft poems.
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Hold Your Darlings
The author of Took House explores a kinder approach to revision, in which language cut during one editorial process may be saved as material for a new writing project.
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Setting the Table for Your Reader
The author of [WHITE] explores the benefits of writing to a specific audience and the risks of trying to meet the market’s imagined demands.
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Revise Like a Painter
The author of [WHITE] considers how writers might take inspiration from visual artists in their approach to revision, pushing beyond surface editing to “see” their work afresh.
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