Rev Their Engines

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
Some­times, despite cram­ming plen­ty of action and conflict into my writ­ing, it still falls flat. I want the words to leap off the page and grab read­ers by the throat, and instead they flop around gasp­ing for breath. For­tu­nate­ly, there’s a straight­for­ward revi­sion trick that can reju­ve­nate such writ­ing: a verb check. I start by going through the piece and under­lin­ing or high­light­ing every verb.… more

Overdrive

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
There’s a quote about sculpt­ing, attrib­uted to Michelan­ge­lo, that I often para­phrase for stu­dents when I’m talk­ing about the art of revising: In every block of mar­ble I see a stat­ue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and per­fect in atti­tude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the love­ly appari­tion to reveal it to the oth­er eyes as mine see it.… more

Stopping by the Diner

Lisa Bullard
My dad has a pas­sion­ate hatred of olives on, in, or even in the gen­er­al vicin­i­ty of his food. He’s con­vinced their mere pres­ence con­t­a­m­i­nates any­thing else on his plate. So when he eats at his favorite small-town din­er, he’s always care­ful to tell the serv­er that he wants his din­ner sal­ad with­out the black olives they usu­al­ly include.… more

Three Tips for Writing Teachers

Melissa Stewart
Teach­ers often feel frus­trat­ed when the revi­sions stu­dents make to their writ­ing aren’t improve­ments. And so they ask me how to help the chil­dren make their man­u­scripts better. I wish I had an easy answer for these teach­ers and for their stu­dents, but here’s the truth: Revi­sion is messy. It’s fraught with detours. Even expe­ri­enced writ­ers strug­gle with the process, and some­times our efforts are com­plete and utter fail­ures.… more

Knowing My Own Mind

There are times when I don’t know my own mind. Worse, there are times when I think I know my mind per­fect­ly well and then find an entire­ly dif­fer­ent mind on a lat­er vis­it to my opinions. Which feels almost as though I have no mind at all. Some time ago one of my favorite writ­ers came out with a new nov­el. I had been wait­ing for her next book for years, so, of course, I signed up to have it pop into my elec­tron­ic read­er at the first oppor­tu­ni­ty.… more

In Draft

He was always chas­ing the next draft of himself.”  Amer­i­can crit­ic Dwight Gar­ner, in the New York Times Book Review on Feb­ru­ary 16 of this year, was describ­ing the child­hood of Hen­ry James. An expand­able list comes to mind, some of our mem­o­rable fig­ures mov­ing toward the next draft of them­selves: Anne Shirley, Hold­en Caulfield, Jo March, Jody Bax­ter, Arnold Spir­it, Jr.,… more

Moseying

Lisa Bullard
My favorite road trips focus more on the dis­cov­er­ies the jour­ney holds than on rapid­ly reach­ing a des­ti­na­tion. You might call me a mosey­ing kind of person. Every fall, my mom and I load my nephews and niece into the car for one of my favorite mean­ders: a vis­it to the Min­neso­ta Land­scape Arbore­tum. In the years it has tak­en for the old­est of the kids to go from babies to tex­ting teenagers, we have per­fect­ed the art of stretch­ing the Arboretum’s Three-Mile Dri­ve into a sev­er­al hours’ ramble.… more

Changing Course

by Lisa Bullard My fam­i­ly didn’t camp when I was a kid. So a few years ago, when a friend asked if I want­ed to go on a camp­ing trip to Arkansas, I said, “Sure. I’ve always want­ed to try camp­ing. It will be fun.” I assumed there would be lots of yum­my toast­ed-marsh­mal­low moments. You know what they say about mak­ing assump­tions, right?… more