The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling

When

I practice my Choy Li Fut empty-hand and weapons kung fu sets and tai chi chuan sets with old friends I’ve trained with since 1981 (since my early twenties I have believed in the traditional Japanese concept of bunburyodo—also favored by the writer Yukio Mishima—which literally means “the pen and the sword in accord,” literary and martial arts toge

I would venture to say voice is absent in apprentice writing precisely because the writer has yet to develop for himself (or herself) a vision of how the world works.

You know when a piece is finished, because you can’t pull out a single sentence or change a word or syllable. If you do extract that heavily polished sentence, you create a hole in the space between the sentences before and

Sartre once wrote, “Every sentence is a risk.” Well might he have added, “Every word is a risk,” for precision in word choice is of paramount importance.

And so the narration at times (or most times) is flavored with his speech patterns and diction, just as it would be in his dialogue.

field that are gray, weak, inconclusive, unthematized, ‘invisible,’ and uncertain in development—this is a guarantee that a significant contribution can be made in that field.”

It is the function of education to introduce the student to the terrifying unknown and provide not only the intellectual skills to make known the unknown but the emotional stability to withstand the terror when the unknown cannot be made known. Such an experience gives the student the self-confidence to go forth and face that mystery which lies at

But today my study is, obviously, a projection or externalization of my own mind and spirit: a cluttered catastrophe of books, creative tools, memorabilia, and images where I always feel most at home.