by Jamie Chavez | Aug 31, 2013 | The Writing Craft
You may have seen this essay from Chuck Palahniuk before, but I just stumbled on it a couple weeks ago. It’s been around for awhile and I can’t seem to (easily) find the original original source, but Palahniuk put his imprimatur on this one when he tweeted it, so I’m...
by Jamie Chavez | Aug 10, 2013 | Words & Language
Sometimes the words just come. Sometimes you just have a spark of inspiration. Sometimes you nail it. It’s happened to me; it’s probably happened to you. And you can live off the high of it for days. I read this short profile of singer-songwriter Paul Anka in Vanity...
by Jamie Chavez | Jun 24, 2013 | The Writing Craft
It’s one of the most basic aspects of writing, isn’t it? Where to start a new paragraph. I don’t mean all the stupid little ones we’re supposed to use in blogs because it’s assumed (though not by me) folks need information broken down into tiny bite-sized pieces due...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 26, 2013 | Authors & Other Writers
I pulled a 1989 Book-of-the-Month/Viking copy of Garrison Keillor’s We Are Still Married off my shelf a few days ago. It’s essays and poems, mostly, and some short stories from Lake Woebegon, the fictional Minnesota town Keillor visits every week in his radio show A...
by Jamie Chavez | Sep 13, 2012 | Authors & Other Writers, Books You Might Like
A friend of mine “introduced” me to Irish writer and broadcaster Fergal Keane in the late ’90s; his BBC Radio 4 broadcast of his emotional essay “Letter to Daniel” had recently caused an enormous stir the British Isles. (Forget the stiff upper lip; when a man waxes...