Flesh and Bones

If you could design a special course that would enhance your ability to write, what would that course be called?

For me, it would be "Putting In the Details."  I am one of those writers who rushes to get the bones down and often overlooks the flesh.  Of course, flesh can always be added later...

Learning Experience

What was the most important educational experience that contributed to your abilities as a writer?  This can be a program, a person, a work you read, or even a realization you achieved yourself.

My top two both happened when I was in my early twenties.  I lived in France for a semester, then I worked in a bookstore for a couple of years.  Living abroad expanded my view of the world, and working in a bookstore taught me about literature and the book business.  I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but those two experiences actually got me started.

Second Language

I have always been grateful that English is my native tongue.  It is the hardest, largest, most confusing language on the face of the earth, therefore, the most difficult to learn.  I think of writers like Nabokov and Brodsky who not only wrote in English, a foreign tongue, but wrote in that language better than native speakers. That has always amazed me.

If you could suddenly develop the ability to write fluently in any language other than your native tongue, which would you choose?

I would choose Russian, not because of Nabokov and Brodsky, but because Russian readers idolize their writers and poets (as well they should).

One book

Here's a horror story in the making:  you have been somehow forced to be able to read only one book for the rest of your life.  I suppose you could be stranded on a desert island, and that's the only book you have with you.  What book could you go back to over and over again, and still find something new in it each time you read it?

I suppose I would choose the Complete Works of William Shakespeare (of which I have owned three copies), but who would be heading for a deserted island with that huge tome in their suitcase? 

Your Life's Story

"If freedom of conscience has the right to exist anywhere, it must be in matters of love."-Victor Hugo.  And that is my answer to today's question:  If you could choose any writer to write your life's story, which writer would you choose?  Or, would you choose to write your own, rather than have someone else write it for you?

Where in the world?

I always thought my dream setting, not just for writing, but for life in general, would be a cabin in the mountains on a lake.  Water and mountains were the key ingredient.  I saw this place once.  It was  in a painting by Maxfield Parrish called "House at the End of the World."  But over the years I've come to realize (mostly due to financial challenges) that the setting isn't important for getting the work done, it's the solitude.

Describe your dream writing setting: cabin in the woods, house on the beach, up in the mountains, down in the valley?

Writing and Food

Does anyone else experience this?  After a couple of hours of writing, even after a big meal, I find myself starving.  Writing makes me hungry.  What’s your favorite snack to keep you going when writing?