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Writing Life

Follow the Thread: Writing as an Act of Faith

When I started writing the essays that would eventually become my first book, Tough Love: A Wyoming Childhood, I did not have a concrete vision of what the book would be about. To learn what I was trying to write and why, I needed to trust the process.

Good Writing is Practice. Practice is Discipline.

Writing is hard work. Working at it means we will almost certainly write sentences that suck, pursue ideas that go nowhere and struggle and grasp for the right words. But this is practice in action: the act of trying, then trying again, then trying again.

The (Not So) Complicated Element of Surprise

When I first started writing, I assumed that if your writing were complex, naturally it would turn out good. I never really understood what people wanted in their reading experience, and I never understood what I truly wanted to accomplish in my own writing. As a young writer, I am still figuring that out.