This week’s episode of my podcast is titled “The Coolest Thing You Will Ever Do In Your Life.” In it, I read a piece of fiction from a work in progress and interview longtime educator Monica D’Antonio about teaching and the state of higher education in America. More or less.
One thought on “The Coolest Thing You Will Ever Do In Your Life”
Comments are closed.
Abominations 
“…but you kinda have to know where commas go”—great line, Marc!
I’m more the “organic” writer, using lots of fertilizer and “whatnot.” :-] Now, one thing I’d “discuss” is that not all writing is conscious and straightforward…I’d argue that there are elements that are ingrained within the writer that “just make themselves known” when needed (of course, the caveat that the method of delivery will depend upon the ability of the writer involved…). “It” comes out unconsciously. And some…like me (right grammatical form—“myself”—?)…who write without an idea about how a story might end, until they write it…or who write “on faith” that a story with unfold and work itself out *in the writing.* I wrote one ms in which—I’m serious—I did not know it was done until I wrote the last word and hit the period. Most of what I’ve written I’ve allowed to unfold as I wrote it, having faith in the story unconsciously manifesting itself to me. Now, truth be told, I rework the hell out of mss afterward and “reverse outline” and shuffle things around (and as a not-full-time fiction writer, it takes me [*has taken me*; hopefully I’m getting better at this gig…] about 2-3 years to complete a novel ms), but is that any different than any other method of rewriting? Eight of the 11 mss I’ve created were written in that manner. No , never taken on by the traditional publishers (but I had an agent for “ERO,” my next endeavor to be released), but Sleepwalkers (which you reviewed) was done that way, and I’ve had favorable reviews, and The Uninvited was done that way (jury’s still out), but is that the POINT? No, the point is that I’d *written*—-CREATED—100K mss without prior outlines, without prior in-depth, conscious thought. Had ideas about what the story was about, but not “100k worth” of detail. Good or bad, I don’t know, but we’ll find out as I have begun publishing them on my own….
All in all, such wonderful insight and discussion into the methods of teaching, learning, and writing in this podcast–thanks for sharing!