Tougher Jobs Than Writing
Spring is here and despite the pandemic, some of us are thinking about where we’ll go for summer vacation. Travel is enlightening and great for broadening perspective and generating new ideas. It also reveals the poverty and tough lives of many people around the world. If you think a writer’s life is rough, fraught with poverty, brutal criticism, and rejection, you ain’t seen nothin’. I keep a list of really bad jobs I’ve encountered in my traveling adventures. Among the wor
Critique Groups for Better Rewriting
The important fact to embrace as you join a critique group is to know without equivocation that you are a writer and like all writers, you need editors. Critique groups are, in essence, your first editors. You need them to be tough and unsparing in their criticism of your work, but also to buoy your spirits a little by kindly pointing out the good points, too. I once toured the National Geographic headquarters Exhbit Hall in Washington, D.C. One exhibit was set up as the edi
