For two years I wrote with a few other writers every Thursday evening. We were taught, and then continued on our own, with the practice of freewriting. Over the months, it became apparent that to keep out of patterns, to keep our inspiration fresh, we had to use...
Freewriting . . . Unimpeded and nonstop writing to a prompt and for a set time, in which you give yourself permission to write “whatever comes” . . . saved my life. Well, it didn’t perform CPR, but it saved my life anyway. My imaginal life. You see,...
I started writing as a freshman at SUNY Buffalo quite a while ago. The coolest kids I knew were in English, and the coolest of them all seemed to be writers. That’s where I wanted to be. But once I went to work I wrote only institutional copy for many years....
Several years ago I returned to writing after an absence of many years. Hard to believe now, but I had found other channels for creativity over the years—as a designer, a teacher and a cook—but the central importance writing had never diminished. There was...