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the scriptwriter’s secret
There’s a character in the book Aunt Julie and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa* who’s known for writing dozens of scripts a day. He writes constantly, and what he writes is good. So people ask him: How do you do it? What’s your secret? His answer: He poops a lot. !!! He says, “Un…
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twenty cat-cows
“Let’s go into cat-cows,” my yoga teacher said last Monday. “We’re going to do twenty.” (Me, silently: That’s way too many cat-cows.) “Don’t go to your full range of motion at first,” she went on. “Start small, and let each one expand a little more.” I felt called out, trying to arch my back as…
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ghosted
Years ago, I met a client in person after months of working together. Right after, she ghosted me. She was a renowned clothing designer, and I was nervous to visit her studio. Still, she was friendly and welcoming, and I left thinking it had gone well. Then she stopped returning my emails. Weeks turned to…
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the remedy for writer’s block
“Let the muse find you working.” “Don’t wait for inspiration. Start writing, and it will come.” That’s the common advice we hear about writing, and it’s missing something crucial. What we need isn’t inspiration. But neither do we need stubbornness or a work ethic of steel. What we need is clarity. * We get writer’s…
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how to write
(a lesson in grammar) Earnestly. Honestly.Tired, cold, thirsty. With a pencil or pen.With or without a plan.With alarm or with tranquility. With abandonWith uncertaintyWith angerWith patience Joyfully. In big letters! Messily, illegibly. Or neatly. On a laptop, in a notebook, on the back of a receipt. On a Post-It, on a napkin, in the snow,…
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sometimes this happens
Sometimes this happens: Someone’s talking to me in Spanish, and in my brain a second line of thought powers up. Hey, I’m understanding! I get everything they’re saying! I even got that turn of phrase they just– And then I realize I’ve stopped listening. Then there’s this: Someone starts speaking in Spanish. Right away my…
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deep sea creatures
“Mia’s teachers want her to skip a grade,” some guy named Tim was saying about his daughter. This was a friend’s house, maybe five years ago. “But we’re gonna keep her in first.” “Why?” I asked. Several people turned and looked at me like I was an idiot. “Um, because it would be really hard…
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greg and jessi
“Say a character walks into a room right as something crashes through the ceiling,” my student Greg was saying. Greg was a senior majoring in creative writing and physics, and he often stayed after class to pepper me with questions. “How would you explain why he looks up?” My TA Chloé and I looked at…
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the right person
Last spring, I had a call with a woman who wanted to write a memoir of her career in the military and then in crypto. It was instantly clear that we are opposites in every way. Her style and background were so vastly different from any project I’d worked on that I didn’t expect us…
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compromise, vicarious
Sometimes I think about what I learned in school. It’s hard to quantify, exactly. Yeah, I learned about cells and rhombuses and World War II. Mostly, I learned how to get good grades. I learned this quickly, so I did well in school, so teachers said I could “be anything.” But the older I got,…
Kimberly Bunker, MFA 