In the course of one week, I received some rather encouraging news regarding one of my writing projects that was followed, only a few days later, by a surprise rejection from elsewhere for the very same project. Let it be known I usually don’t consider any rejection a “surprise,” but this rejection was for something [...]

In “Dear Younger Writing Self,” Allison Amend advises the writer she used to be not to worry so much when it comes to her writing career. Here’s a snippet: At the moment, you are worrying that you are not as good as the other people in your MFA program. True, most of them have more [...]

“Dear Dan Chaon: You must never let anyone tell you what you want to be. If you want to be a writer, be a writer. It’s that simple. When I was your age, I wrote every day of my life, and my stuff wasn’t half as good as yours. Quality doesn’t count, to begin with, [...]

One of my best friends is brilliant and creative and artsy. Her life is also extremely busy — she works full-time in a demanding field and also recently returned to school to earn her MBA. In addition to all this, she’s making time for her art, too. A few weeks ago, she sent me the [...]

Last week, I was taking a nice long walk in the Cleveland Metroparks when I came to a loop crowded with runners. They appeared to be training for some sort of marathon or half-marathon or whatever crazy distance real runners can handle. (Instead of certain other people who jog for 1.5 miles and then have [...]

Last night, I attended a benefit featuring Thrity Umrigar, who read from her new book, The World We Found. The event was held at my favorite local wine shop, Rozi’s, and proceeds benefited my local library. Talk about a trifecta — stunning writing, free-flowing wine, and library love. It doesn’t get any better than this, [...]

I was going through an old notebook — very old; it has notes for some of the stories in Living Arrangements before they were even stories — when I found a page of random writing advice. It clearly came from some long-ago writing conference I attended, but I have no idea when, where it was, [...]

This is my invitation to the Sophie Kerr Prize ceremony, which will be held in New York City tonight. As a past winner, I was invited, but I won’t be attending because I’m currently eating lots of donuts and guzzling organic microbrewed beer attending a conference in Portland, Oregon. If I’d been available, I might [...]

This is my “writing tub” full of old drafts, notes from conferences I attended 6 years ago, lists of freelance markets, and a random sampling of critiques from some of the many writing groups I attended during the last decade. I’ve compiled some of these workshop comments below. In case it’s not clear, I’m not [...]

Something strange and bewildering happened to me recently. It involved a short story, a literary magazine, an acceptance, and then an odd and unexpected twist. When it all went down, I wanted to blog about it — I think it offers some good lessons for new writers just starting to get published. But I’m not [...]