The Secret to Writing Good Sentences
Lately, I’ve been judging my sentences as too clunky. They get to the point but there’s no inspiration. So I thought about what books in the past inspired me to write interesting sentences. European greats like Tolstoy, Hugo, Balzac, Dickens, James. And then contemporary writers like Anthony Doerr, Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Don DeLillo, Richard Yates, E.L. Doctorow, Ta Nahesi Coates. Why did I just list all men? There are plenty of women: Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Kingsolver, Tracy Chevalier, Ann Patchett, Alice Munro, Sarah Waters, hell, even…
Moving to Seattle: The Best Decision I Ever Made
Today is my 21st anniversary of moving to Seattle. I came here in late January of 1992. I was just out of graduate school, my job had been eliminated, and I had no romantic partner in my life. I’d visited the Northwest the previous October, staying with my aunt and uncle who’d recently moved here themselves. As I explored the area, I fell utterly in love with the giant trees, the beautiful lakes, and spectacular mountain countryside. When I mentioned to my aunt and uncle how great it would be…
Richard Ford on Writing as an Arrangement of Words
When I debuted this blog, I called it, “An Arrangement of Words.” That’s a phrase Richard Ford once said. It’s a beautiful expression, elegantly encapsulating what we writers do: arrange words to create a world and a truth. But as I realized I wanted to write about more than just my writing passion, I considered other titles for the blog. Finally, I found the theme that displays what I’m all about: cultivating a better life. Anyway, I still love that expression and thought writers might be interested in how I…
