I suspect that there are countless American family stories akin to this one, the journey to point of departure, the voyage itself, the arrival, and early years of tragedy and/or triumph.
It’s not really a surprise then, that on my shelves I have a few — very few — books from my childhood. Read this week’s essay about those books.
Last night didn’t start well. It began when my wife and I sat down to a new soup recipe. That soup took two hours to make, but only about thirty seconds to realize, “This is awful.”
“I am working on a new book. It’s so new it has no title, and to be honest, I’m not sure what will happen. Certainly, no ending is in sight.”
With the return of school — has always meant the beginning of the year for me. Never mind January One. As far as I am concerned, this is the time when the year truly starts.
This summer, I invited twelve successful writers to comment on one of their recent books and to give some advice about writing. For you teachers and librarians and new writers there is enough wealth of insights and ideas to suggest a re-reading. And using.
I come from a huge family. Eleven, plus my grandfather. So whenever we would get together to trade stories, there were usually twelve sides to every story.
The general idea to do a funny book came to me during a writer’s workshop. The writers in the room wanted to know my answer to the question, “What kinds of books need to be published nowadays? What should we be writing?”
Let me say this first: I’m not a criminal. I don’t have a dishonest bone in my body. But I got the idea for Faker when I started wondering: What happens when fate forces ordinary people to break the law?
Here’s a little secret. I love to write, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes writing a book feels like an impossible task. When that happens, I stop using the “w” word entirely.