Scuppernongs and Muscadines Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian I spoke at a writing association recently where I noted that it takes me several years to finish an essay. I saw dismay on the faces of aspiring memoirists (since like many new writers they wanted to be told that their focus should be on finding agents and […]
“Who does Robert Olen Butler think he is?” I was trying to explain to a young man why you always, always carry a writing notebook and a pen, so I showed him this genuine, overhead-in-the-hallways, can’t-make-this-stuff-up line I had jotted down minutes earlier, and no, I’m not telling you who said it — not here […]
I am enormously flattered to have my thoughts on the state of the essay featured as a blog post in an interesting ongoing discussion on Brevity’s blog. These thoughts started as a comment on an earlier post in an eminently readable thread. Perhaps my words showed me in good form because I’ve been thinking about […]