Writing Prompts
William Faulkner used to map his stories on his office wall.  If you visit his home in Oxford, Mississippi, you can still see the notes for his novel in his precise, small handwriting.  When Laura Schenone was writing her memoir, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, she kept photos of her Genovese great grandmother, Adalgisa, propped on her desk, and Adalgisa’s handmade rolling pin nearby.  Edwidge Dandicat has an evolving bulletin board in her workspace where she tacks up collages of photos of Haiti and images from magazines. I like learning about writers’ methods, if only because they

Guest Blog: Essayist Maureen Stanton on Why Insight is the Last Thing to Come
For this writer, the creative process happens in stages – and the final one makes all the difference: The first is the molecular stage, that early collection of bits of information, what I find fascinating, unusual, funny or poignant at the time it occurs, whether I retain it in memory or in a physical form on pieces of paper. The critical mass stage is next.  The particle

Priming the Pump
Mondays are hard.  All weekend you’ve been doing laundry, taking family bike rides, reading the Times in bits and pieces, going to your kids’ soccer games, and then it’s Monday morning and they’re all out the door (except the dog, who is lying on your feet), and it’s hard to know where to begin, how to pick up where you left off. When I was growing up in Maine, my professor parents bought an A-frame on a tiny island on a

Guest Blog: Lisa Romeo Adds Her Two Cents to the Writer-as-Parent Manifesto
[Editor's note:  Yesterday, on her terrific blog about writing, writer/editor Lisa Romeo talked about Louise DeSalvo's piece in this space and added some tips of her own.  Thanks, Lisa, for giving me permission to post them here as well.] Just the other day I was passing along tips to some writing class students who have school-age children

Quick Link: 5 Quotes that Influenced the Writing of a Novel
Recently I was invited to do a guest blog for Madam Mayo, using a simple format:  I had to provide five links that are in some way relevant to my new novel.  (Other writers have used this format in all kinds of ways – 5 Secrets of Mexico City, Top 5 Aviation Museums, 5 Magnetic Spaces – as you can see.)   Rooti