Once in a while I find out I’ve missed something important in the book world, some classic that’s been out forever that I somehow never noticed when it was first published, something that turns out to be wonderful. Then once in a very great while I find something I wish I’d read thirty years before it was ever published.
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I have never understood the praised heaped on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short novel, The Great Gatsby. I wrote about this here some years back. If there is only one “Great American Novel” – a nonsensical idea invented, I suspect, by … Continue reading
This month, I want you to introduce you to something that is not actually in my writing box at all. It has nevertheless fuelled a lot of writing in class. It is also a little topical. I chose this item … Continue reading
This month my teaching box has grown. I’ve moved more items into it and added a hatbox to the hatbox to contain everything. One of the new additions is something I collected on my US book tour, in 2003. I … Continue reading
You ever run into things that you wish you knew? Things you don’t have time to learn, maybe, or that are out of your willingness to run down, or stuff that’s hard to find out? There are many such things … Continue reading
Today I’m going back over fifty years Between cultures, in fiction, in all our lives, childhood can have similarities and differences. Teaching the theory is a wonderful thing, and something I’m prone to. I will teach how to create a … Continue reading
Today’s teaching tool is a simple egg. For a few months, I found goose eggs at the market. They were a joy to cook with and eat, and I blew one to keep to teach with. Simple, really. What’s … Continue reading
There are several pottery fragments in my teaching box. They always make students dream. The students’ eyes become greedy and they want to take these sad scraps home. They’re shy about touching them, even though these fragments are probably the … Continue reading
How do we bring our readers into a new world with us? How do we make them accept that this world is real? I have many tools for this in my teaching box. Most of my tools for this are … Continue reading
My teaching box is wide open at the moment, spilling its secrets. Let me give you a photograph. Not everything is there. This is because of the reason it’s open. I’m teaching a course on writing using your own voice, … Continue reading