Making Words Harder

I’ve been thinking about the Thomas Mann quote Barbara used on her overview of the class sheet: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult.” Besides being a superficially funny commentary on the torturous nature of the writing process, the quote rings true not because writers are less intelligent or inherently slower than [...]

Welcome to Hell

One of the things that make BG’s intro creative writing class so unique (and scary, painful, stressful, wonderful, rewarding, insightful, transformitory) is how it send a few healthy shudders through that so-carefully-constructed foundation by exposing writing as a wonderfully amorphous beast…. When the dust settles, and I sit back to look at what has been squeezed, at times drop-by-drop, from my stubbornly guarded (those writing gremlins are fierce) brain, the rewards are infinitely greater than any suffering I may have had to endure.

Welcome to the motherblog!

Hi everyone, Welcome to the blog! If your first day in Barbara’s class was anything like mine, you’re probably wondering right about now, “What, exactly, have I gotten myself into?” I was that girl two years ago — the one who believed full-heartedly that creative writing just wasn’t my bag. When Barbara cast her eyes [...]