Read more on my blog.

Welcome to my new website.

I would love to hear from you!

I'm a daily writer, an artist, a yoga student and a road cyclist. On my blog, I write about the practice and craft of writing, and teaching, with occasional posts about riding bikes and looking for love...

. "You must always keep changing your process!" Maria Irene Fornes says. "Because there are two of you, one who wants to write and one who doesn't. The one who wants to write has to keep fooling the one who doesn't!"

On my website, I have posted information about my current projects, workshops, readings, and a little bit about my books.

Current Projects

I'm not doing any workshops this summer, as I am finishing up three book projects....a new book of essays on faith and love and:

Face First: A Memoir forthcoming from Riverhead Books in early Fall 2010....

Face First is the story of my quest to see clearly. It all began with a chance remark at my twentieth high school reunion, which, in turn led me to discover a disturbing family medical secret. Researching the inherited condition, I came upon a phrase that would unexpectedly change my life: face recognition. Up to this point, I knew nothing about the tiny part of the human brain called the fusiform face area, where, when we are confronted with a human face, a sophisticated series of perception processes begins instantaneously. Or in my case, does not begin. Face blindness? I’d never heard of such a thing. Was not being able to recognize my family members a key part of being related to them? Read on...

The Nighttime Novelist forthcoming from Writer's Digest Books in late Spring 2010

For writers who have a day job (or a night job or any kind of real life), I've created an interactive guidebook that leads new authors through the process of writing a novel or a memoir. Questions, maps, plans, tons of tiny, well-tested assignments and prompts, ways to get unstuck -- this new writing guide has been so much fun to write!

I worry too many writers write too fast. They master the basics of plot and character...they do everything "right" and still the book doesn't get finished, or, worse, the book is finished but it doesn't sell. No one wants to read it. My goal in this new craft book is to help new writers create a book that is beautiful and important and masterful and wild and real. Break the rules. Be weirder than you are right now. Write the book only you can write. It's a slow and difficult process, but also the most rewarding work I've ever engaged in, writing a novel. I have a plan for tackling this work that allows more room for the unconscious mind and all its detours, a plan that involves focusing on how artist's play, I'm eager to see what readers think!

The Practice of Creative Writing

The Practice of Creative Writing is for the introductory mixed-genre creative writing classroom. I've read student creative writing for almost 20 years, and written a great heap of it myself. This is what I've noticed: We learn all these rules. Then someone brings something to class and it ignores all the rules and its amazing. How? Why? My teacher, Jerry Stern, used to say it was good if it was interesting. I wanted to find a way to teach my students how to avoid being boring on the page. Read on...