Category Archives: The Memory Project

In IIRC we trust: The Memory Project is the extension of a writing exercise I’ve used for years, in which students are asked to take an experience and write about it as concretely as possible and see what happens. Does memory beget memory? Can tangible details convey emotion? Let’s find out. Also some general nattering about the writing life and touring.

Sally Fellows, RIP

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How is the death of a passionate reader from Omaha, Nebraska connected to the fake review scandal? Read on. My life as a published writer and the mass use of the Internet dovetail in an interesting way. (Well, it’s interesting to me.) I bought my first computer, a Mac Classic 2, in 1993, and wrote my first book on it. Sometime in 1994, maybe 1995, I bought an external modem and connected to the “Internet” via a free CompuServ program. Yes, I am approximately 9,000 years old. There, I discovered Read More [...]

Pub Date: A tradition

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"I remember one year my friend Carpenter and I had books out on the same day. We talked about it all summer. We each had modest expectations. I had modest expectations for his book; he had modest expectations for mine . . . Finally the big day arrived and I woke up happy, embarrassed in advance by all the praise and attention that would be forthcoming. I made coffee and practiced digging my toe in the dirt . . . Then I waited for the phone to ring. The phone did not know its part. It sat Read More [...]

Under Construction

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What the Dead Know ends with a woman finding power in her own name, something that has been denied to her for much of her life. Could it be more vivid, more resonant? Possibly. But I wouldn't change it, in part because this is the book I wrote in 2006 and it's a record of who I was that year, as a writer and a person. Read More [...]

Games of Chance

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I found I mourned a dollar lost more than I ever celebrated a dollar won. That’s me in a nutshell, and the observation suddenly clicked into place alongside other things I have been pondering as I re-read Geneen Roth’s Lost and Found, her account of being one of Bernie Madoff’s victims. Losses hurt more than victories thrill. Perhaps that's how most people feel. But the epiphany struck me, belatedly to be sure, that if one plays not to lose, then that’s the outcome: Not losing. Which is not the same as winning. Read More [...]

That Thing I Do

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Writers are used to being asked certain questions. Do you write every day? Do you work on a computer? Do you outline? My friend Jan Burke once observed of the last question that the two camps regard each other with amazement. If one outlines, it's hard to imagine how someone could produce work without that kind of orderly process; if one doesn't outline, it's hard to give up the intuitive stye that has guided one through previous books. Read More [...]