Rob Tourtelot
- FEH, my newest memoir (more details about that soon), began with my wanting to write about the rampant judgementalism and sneering contempt I was seeing all around me. It takes on God, Jesus, Paul Rudd, Nextdoor, social media, Schopenhauer, Wolf Blitzer and Yuval Noah Harari. And even with all those sacred cows, it felt bland... until I decided to ... See more
from Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers
- The most sacred cows are the ones that are sacred to ourselves.
That’s the catch.
As I got older, I realized that the books that stuck with me for decades where the ones in which the writer held a mirror up to himself - his shame, his self-loathing, his prejudice, his hatred, his fear, his anxiety - all that sacred stuff we don't want to admit we fee... See morefrom Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers
- Much as working with a piano teacher is not, fundamentally, about learning songs, but about using songs to push yourself; I now think of our projects, not as ends in themselves, but as means to help us improve the underlying process and ourselves. This helps put me in the right frame of mind. I want this essay to turn out well, of course. But the g... See more
from On limitations that hide in your blindspot
- if I tell exactly the story I’ve set out to tell, I’ve failed. The truer story exists somewhere outside the margins of consciousness. Writing constraints help us discover the truth rather than recite it.
from The One (and Only) Technique That Finally Helped Me Write About Trauma
- Writing doesn’t just change the way we understand our lives or the world. It changes us. Sometimes, it saves us.
from Dear Scared to Feel Too Much: Sometimes, Writing Saves Us
- The significant story possesses more awareness than the writer writing it. The significant story is always greater than the writer writing it. This is the absurdity, the disorienting truth, the question that is not even a question, this is the koan of writing.
from Joy Williams on Why Writers Write
- I don't know if there's a specific thing, but you know it immediately. The minute I start it I know that it's the book I want to fall in love with. And that's the one I keep reading. I will read a hundred pages of something else, but I won't fall in love with it. You have this immediate sense of texture and place, and you're just inside it from the... See more
from Agents & Editors: A Q&A With Four Young Editors
- Joshua has written a memoir Down From the Mountain Top : He adds a note to readers: “altered minor details,” “changed or omitted names” and adds this wise advice: “To remember is to reconstruct and interpret and this is as truthful a story as my memory can tell.”
from Joshua asks
—Joshua Dolezal
- “We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which ... See more
from A quote from The White Album