Return to the Writer's Roundtable

Summertime, and the livin' is easy....At least it seems easier here, with daylight hours stretching into night, after dinner strolls, and early morning porch sitting.  There is a general sense of ease during my Michigan summers.  So I'm thinking about using some of that extra time for writing, and reading about writing, and practicing writing.  So come join me on Wednesday's as we gather 'round the writer's roundtable and  explore all things writerly...the craft, the mechanics, the planning, the process.

To begin, I opened a book that's lain untouched on my shelf for more than a year~ The Portable MFA in Creative Writing, by The New York Writer's Workshop ~ a compendium of the "core essentials" which are taught to MFA students in programs all over the country.  Chapter One focuses on fiction.  Where to begin writing fiction?  You've heard it a million times - "out of your own experience." 

Tim Tomlinson, author of this first "lesson," advises the writer to "look at your own life and try to make sense of certain moments - perhaps small moments that represent some larger truth.  At which point might I enter the morass of my life and write a story?  At a point when something significant changed."

So tell us, what are some turning points in your life that might lend themselves to a good story?

Write about them.