Damn Canadians are ruining my book.

Clara handed me this broken percussive instrument. "Can you fix this?" she asked.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Charlie and I are playing camping. We made a tent and everything. And Charlie's a Canadian woodsman. This is his axe. He was chopping trees, and then he tried to chop down the wrong tree. Which was actually the stairs. His axe broke. Can you fix it, because it's getting cold, and we're going to need more firewood."

All this while I try to finish the revisions on my novel... 

A possible cure for writer's block

I have thankfully never suffered from writer's block, but if you do, perhaps you could try this innovative means of writing in hopes of curing it:

Write naked.

I can't say that his work was especially impressive that day, but he was putting words to the page, which apparently is a big deal to anyone suffering from writer's block.

The very best way to earn a dollar

I have a friend who is a successful attorney. He earns an excellent living. By all standards, he is doing very well for himself and his family.

He is also a screenwriter. He has yet to sell a screenplay, but he has an agent, a manager, and a successful writing partner. He has been paid to work on various film-related projects in the past.

In short, he has potential. He writes well. He's producing screenplays. Putting in the time. Doing the work. Waiting for his big break. 

Last week he was hired to write the trailer for an upcoming film. He earned $500 for his efforts.

Writing trailers is not exactly screenwriting. It's not even creative writing. It's more like creatively writing about someone else's creative writing. 

And $500 is not much of a paycheck. In comparison to his salary as an attorney, it's not a lot of money at all. It's not a small amount of money, but it's not going to make or break his holiday season.

But when I spoke to him about the job, he said, "It's the best $500 I've made in a long time."

I understood perfectly. As much money as I might make as a teacher or public speaker or wedding DJ or tutor or life coach or minister, there is no better way to earn a dollar than to be paid for something you made up in your head.  

I'll say it again:

There is no better way to earn a dollar than to be paid for something you made up in your head.  

Owl hunters interrupt fiction writer's flow

In case you didn't know what an owl hunter looked like, here are two are in the flesh. Note the uniform: 

Pajamas. Straw hat or beach pail worn as helmets. Rain boots.

Each is also equipped with a mode of transport (scooter or tricycle) and a flashlight. 

In this training run, I served as the owl. Lights in the house were turned off because the taller of the two hunters noted that owls are not diurnal. They are nocturnal. 

You never know what is going to interrupt my attempt to get a little writing done. 

Reading & Writing podcast interview

A while ago, I was interviewed by Jeff Rutherford for his Reading & Writing podcast. It's a 30 minute conversation about my writing process, productivity, and many other things.  

Why I choose to write in McDonald's

Two old, Italian guys are sitting in a booth beside me at McDonald's. 

FIRST GUY:  Leo, where were you? I thought you were going to take me to Avon today.

SECOND GUY:  I was. But then I got into my car and fell asleep.

FIRST GUY (with complete sincerity):  God. Damn. I hate when that happens.

This is why I choose to write my novels here, in this glorious fast food restaurant on the edge of the highway, and not in a Starbucks or some similarly upscale, fair trade, recovered railroad tie, jazz-infused coffee establishment.

There is a diversity and oddity and texture in this place that I adore. As I scan the room, I see white people and brown people. English speakers and possibly-Spanish-but-I'm-not-quite-sure speakers. Business folk and working class folk. The young and old. The very young and the very old. Singletons and couples and families. Packs of teenagers. The happy and the exhausted.  

Sitting to my immediate left is a UPS driver, head hanging low, eating a Big Mac and reading a book. He is young, thin, and black. To my right, a teenage girl with a streak of blue hair pecks away at her phone while her friend stares blankly at her like a goldfish. Directly across from me, standing in line, a woman rocks an infant in her arms while a man - perhaps her husband - orders food from a Latino teenage girl. A couple minutes ago a middle aged man in a suit and a paunch walked by my table, yapping about PE ratios to someone on his phone. An older, McDonald's employee pushes a broom off to my right.

It is a level of diversity rarely encountered in this increasingly gentrified world. 

Most of the time, I write in my home. I do not require a outside locale to ply by trade. I am not a writer be claims to need a coffee shop and cappuccino and John Mayer to write. I must not engage in public displays of writing in order to feel like a real author. The dining room table and my bottle of water does me just fine.

But occasionally my children make it difficult to write, or I need a change of scenery. This often results in a trip to the library, but it also brings me here, to this molded plastic booth and this angular, plastic table, where I can sit amongst a splash of humanity and listen and watch diversity scrape against diversity.  

If I want to sit amongst upper middle class white people, with their $6 coffees, Apple computers, high end strollers, and first world problems, I will take my work to Starbucks or its indie equivalent. It won't nourish my soul or inspire my work, but I'm admittedly more likely to find an available power outlet and a slightly more comfortable chair.    

But more often than not, you will find me here, sitting amongst the masses, armed with a Diet Coke, a small bag of French fries, and a smile. I may have a pair of headphones covering my ears, white noise or Pandora's Springsteen station drowning out the the world. 

But I'm just as likely to be headphone free, listening to two old, Italian guys navigate life in their sunset years, wondering how I might use their struggle and friendship and unintended hilarity in one of my stories someday.

You don't get stuff this good at a place like Starbucks.

Teachers of writing at any level: Read this immediately. Nothing is more important.

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Patrick Modiano, who had this to say about the writing process during his acceptance speech:

Writing is a strange and solitary activity. It is a little like driving a car at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility. You have no choice, you cannot go into reverse, you must keep going forward while telling yourself that all will be well when the road becomes more stable and the fog lifts.

Similarly, here are some other comments on the writing process from a variety of accomplished and respected authors:

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
~E. L. Doctorow

Start before you’re ready. ~Steven Pressfield

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
~ William Faulkner

There are hundreds more like this.

Why do I bring this up?

In hopes that all of the teachers who require students to complete graphic organizers or planning sheets or move little pencils across bulletin board displays of the writing process or force their students to work on one piece at a time or assign their students specific topics for their writing assignments will knock it off and learn to write themselves instead of subjecting their students to their bizarre, inaccurate, nonproductive, and likely damaging perceptions of the writing process.

This is not to say that organization and planning should never be used when writing. About half the writers of the world plan in some way. Mystery, historical fiction, and many nonfiction writers plan their stories with great detail before they begin writing, but not all, and even when they plan, this process is often as amorphous and convoluted as the writing process itself. Rarely does it fit into little boxes and pocket charts. 

If you are teaching writing but not writing yourself on a regular basis, you are probably – no, definitely – doing more harm than good. Your ignorance of the writing process – coupled with the way you teach it – is turning out ineffective, uninspired, under confident writers.

You have made the ability to write well and love writing a rare commodity. You have made people like me more singular and valuable than we should be.

The writing process is not some finely delineated series of steps. It is not a codified system of applying words to the page. It does not adhere to structure or schedule or graphic representation. It is none of these things.

If you teach writing to students of any age, my advice is simple:

Write.  

Write. Write. Write. Learn about the process that you are teaching instead of making bizarre and wildly inaccurate assumptions about it or replicating the terrible instruction that you received long ago that never actually turned you into someone who loves to write or you would already be writing and wouldn’t be forcing students to do such ridiculous things.

Just write.   

See how often you use a graphic organizer.

See how much you appreciate being assigned a specific topic.

See how productive you think it is moving a little paper pencil across a bulletin board from one facet of the writing process to another.

See how much you value the notion of prewriting.

See how un-delineated things like writing and revising and editing are. See how amorphous and undefined the writing process is, and how stupid stupid stupid it is to force students to work on one of these parts of the writing process and not another.

Please. Just write.

Either that or your choice is simple:

Stop teaching writing altogether. You’re doing more harm than good. Just let your students write, absent any instruction or interruption. Sit at the back of the classroom and read. Or eat a sandwich. Or take a nap.

Your students have a far greater chance of leaving your classroom loving to write than if you open your uninformed mouth and do all the ridiculous things that non-writers think belong in the instruction of writing.

Storyteller Interruptus

I don’t have an office. I have a sad, little room attached to the side of the house with ancient windows and no heat that would require a hat and mittens in order to spend any time in. So when I am working at home, I do the majority of my writing at the dining room table.

This is a mixed bag. Part of me loves working while my children are running around and playing underfoot, but the constant interruption of the workflow makes things extremely challenging at times (and sends me scurrying to the library or McDonald’s or my classroom in order to get things done).

Thankfully, I do a lot of my work before and after everyone is asleep, but during the day, even an benign question from my wife can bring things to a grinding halt.

In our next home, I will have an office, damn it. A heated room where I can escape and work when necessary.

Clara felt my pain the other day when she tried to use materials from school to retell a story for us. She was doing such a lovely job (perhaps she will be a writer someday, too) while her rotten brother tried to spoil everything with his rottenness.

If only the world would treat us storytellers like the delicate flowers that we are. 

The best way to stop a novelist dead in his tracks

Want to know what will stop a novelist from finishing the final tweaks of his manuscript?

His five year-old daughter teaching his two year-old son how to tell bad knock knock jokes.

It’s the worst.

My son doesn’t give a damn about my deadlines.

It was early in the morning. I was trying to finish a book. I needed some peace and quiet.

I got this instead. And it was great.

Hemingway was an idiot. Write sober.

It sounds clever, and the association between writing and the consumption of alcohol is a powerful and lasting one, but I disagree with Hemingway on this one. Frankly, I think he was an idiot when it came to this idea.

How about we all just write and edit sober and do our best work instead?

John Steinbeck was an unrealistically and obscenely mature man

I have never used an em dash. I don’t even know how to make an em dash. But you can still find them in my books.

Noreen Malone of Slate argues against the em dash.

The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don't you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won't be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that's not yet complete? Strunk and White—who must always be mentioned in articles such as this one—counsel against overusing the dash as well: "Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate."  Who are we, we modern writers, to pass judgment—and with such shocking frequency—on these more simple forms of punctuation—the workmanlike comma, the stalwart colon, the taken-for-granted period?

I’ve written five novels. Two memoirs. Dozens of short stories. Thousands of blog posts.  Countless pieces for newspapers, magazines, websites, and the like.

I have never used an em dash. Not once. Honestly, I don’t even know how to make an em dash. I’d have to Google it.

I agree with Malone. A period has almost always suffices. Occasionally a comma. Sometimes a set of parentheses.

This is not to say that you won’t find an em dash in my novels, because you will, dear reader. They are few and far between, but if you have the time to search, a handful of em dashes can be found.

But please know that when you do, it was placed there by an editor who felt that it served the story better than my original choice of punctuation.

Like I said, I don’t even know what combination of keys produces such a thing.

“Where do you get your ideas?” is an understandable but impossible-to-answer question for authors. But “Nuns at Scout camp” will be one of my answers someday.

I’m often asked where I get my ideas for books, which is an understandable but impossible question to answer.

There is no well of ideas. There is no secret formula. There is no one answer to that question, as much as fledgling writers seem to want there to be.

Simply put, I hear something. I read something. I see something. The flicker of an idea is born.

Something Missing was born from a conversation with a friend over dinner about a missing earring.

Unexpectedly, Milo began with a memory from my fourth grade classroom.

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend was born from a conversation with a friend and colleague while monitoring students at recess.

My upcoming novel, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, originated with a story that my wife told me about her childhood just before falling asleep.

My unpublished novel, Chicken Shack, began with a dare.

All of these are simplifications of the actual origins of these novels. There are more complex stories behind the origin of each book. In all cases, additional ideas were grafted onto the original idea to create a more complex story.

But in terms of the initial spark, that was how each story began.

Which leads me to this poster, which is displayed in the Yawgoog Heritage Museum at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, the camp where I spent many of my boyhood summers.

I suspect that someday in the future, this poster will be added to the list of initial sparks for one of my novels.

A nun’s day at a Scout camp? How could this not be the basis for a novel?

Dungeons & Dragons brought me back to writing and saved my career.

The New York Times reports that Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz is a former Dungeons & Dragons player.

So too was Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire.

Many more.

The league of ex-gamer writers also includes the “weird fiction” author China Miéville (“The City & the City”); Brent Hartinger (author of “Geography Club,” a novel about gay and bisexual teenagers); the sci-fi and young adult author Cory Doctorow; the poet and fiction writer Sherman Alexie; the comedian Stephen Colbert; George R. R. Martin, author of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series (who still enjoys role-playing games). Others who have been influenced are television and film storytellers and entertainers like Robin Williams, Matt Groening (“The Simpsons”), Dan Harmon (“Community”) and Chris Weitz (“American Pie”).

It’s an impressive but certainly not exhaustive list.

Not exhaustive, for certain, because it does not include me. I am also a former Dungeons & Dragons player.

In fact, D&D brought me back to writing and saved my writing career.

I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons in middle school, when a friend  introduced me to the game. I rolled some dice, created a character, and played The Keep on the Borderlands, an adventure that I can still remember to this day. I fell in love with the game immediately, and before long, I had stopped playing and had graduated to Dungeon Master, the leader of the adventure. The arbiter of the rules, the invisible hand of fate, but most important, the storyteller. I began by using pre-purchased Dungeons & Dragons adventures (called modules) but was soon writing my own adventures for my players.

In many ways, I was writing stories for the first time.

I played D&D throughout much of my childhood, becoming a scholar of the game. When cars, girls, and high school sports injected themselves into my life, Dungeons & Dragons was pushed aside. I briefly played again after high school with friends who were attending college. Then my manuals, modules, and multisided dice were packed away and moved to the basement, never to be seen again.

Or so I thought.

Fast forward about 12 years. It’s 2002. I’ve graduated from Trinity College with a degree in English and creative writing, and for the last five years, I have been trying and failing to write my first novel. Nothing I seem to do works. Nothing I write makes me happy. After many failed attempts, I have given up on my dream. I’ve come to the realization that as much as I want to be an author, even I don’t like the things I write.

I quit. I decide that I will never be an author. 

Then I get a call from my friend, Shep, a former Dungeons & Dragons player in his childhood. He has gathered some of our friends (also former players) and wants to try playing the game again. He asks me to join the group.

At this point in my life, I am single and hoping to find the right girl, and I don’t see Dungeons & Dragons as the path to romance, so I decline.

He calls back a few days later. He tells me that I don’t need to play. “Just write our adventures. Maybe serve as Dungeon Master, if you want, but at least write some adventures for us.”

I suddenly have an audience for my writing. People want to read the words that I write. People are asking to read the words that I write. Something stirs inside me. I say yes.

I write D&D adventures for my friends for more than a year, and yes, I am convinced to occasionally reprise my role as Dungeon Master, too. I write hundreds of pages of Dungeons & Dragons adventures, and as I do, the writer in me awakens. I start to feel good about writing again. I start to wonder if I can still be the writer that I dreamed of being when I was in high school.

It’s an exciting time in my life.

About a year after my return to Dungeons & Dragons, I call Shep. I tell him that I can’t write D&D adventures anymore. I tell him that I need to try writing a novel again. I tell him that I feel that pull toward the page that I have not felt in so long.

He understands. He offers to read whatever I write. Shep becomes my first reader. He remains an early reader and one of the most important readers of my work to this day.

I start writing Something Missing in February of 2005. I finish writing it in June of 2007. It publishes in 2009.

I have made my childhood dream come true. My writing career has been launched. I am an author.

Would I be writing today if it hadn’t been for Dungeons & Dragons? I would like to think that I would’ve eventually returned to the page, but I’m not sure.

Maybe not.

A friend in middle school introduces me to the game.

More than twenty years later another friend brings me back to the game.

I find my chops. I rediscover my love for writing. I start the novel that launches my career.

Take away either one of these friends and I shudder to think about what might have happened to my dream/

Take away Dungeons & Dragons and I wonder if I would be sitting here today, writing these words.

Maybe not.

You’ll be shocked to discover who favors old fashioned ink and paper over digital composition

I’ve been teaching writing to students ages 12-16 for the past three weeks. Seven students in all. Every one of them is an excellent writer. A couple are legitimately gifted.

Two surprises:

1. Five of my students write with a paper and pen and couldn’t imagine writing on a computer or tablet, at least for their first draft. Only one writes exclusively on a laptop (and she writes primarily for the Internet), and the other switches between pen-and-paper and her phone.
2. A different five read almost exclusively from old fashioned books. Paper and ink. One reads exclusively on a tablet. The last switches between formats.

I was stunned when I saw these teenagers scribbling in journals and flipping through through pages. It’s not what I expected.

A month ago, I was walking down a long line of people waiting to attend a Moth StorySLAM in NYC, and I was both surprised and pleased with the number of people standing in line, passing the time by reading ink and paper books.

Could this be a sign that people are seeking a greater balance between digital and analog?

I hope so. 

The payoff for a writer or a performer is an infinitesimal sliver of the job. Too many forget this and aren’t willing to do the work.

Saturday was a good day for me.

It began with the first performance ever of “Caught in the Middle,” the tween musical written by writing partner, Andy Mayo, and myself. It was produced at a performing arts camp in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and like our previous musical, The Clowns, I fell in love with the show while watching it performed on stage.

   

Then Elysha and I left for New York so I could perform in The Liar Show in the West Village. I told a story about my unfortunate participation in a bachelorette party in a McDonald’s crew room when I was 19 years-old.

A friend was kind enough to comment on how much I had going on that day. “It must be exciting to have so many creative things going on in your life,” she said.

It’s true. Days like Saturday are exciting, but they come with a cost. When I talk to fledging writers, storytellers, and other people involved in the arts, I’m always quick to remind them that days like Saturday are few and far between.

They account for about 1% of the job.

The other 99% of the job is a lot of hard, tedious, and lonely work.

“Caught in the Middle” was more than a year in the making. It involved writing, collaborating, rewriting, revising, and more rewriting. It was hundred of hours spent crafting scenes, integrating music, developing characters, and agonizing over plot. My writing partner, Andy, had to poke, prod, and cajole me to continue working.

It wasn’t easy.

My invitation to perform in The Liar Show was the result of almost three years of storytelling, including more than 40 appearances at The Moth and other storytelling shows and the launch of our own storytelling organization, Speak Up. Thousands of hours of work have made me the storyteller I am today and gave me the opportunity to perform on Saturday night.

I didn’t happen overnight.

I was reading Billy Crystal’s memoir, Still Foolin’ ‘Em, and learned that in order to pursue his career in comedy, he became a stay-at-home father in a time when that was exceptionally rare. When his wife arrived home from work in the evening, he would join her for dinner and prepare his set for later that night, sometimes writing and sometimes rehearsing.

Then at 10:00, he would embark on an hour long commute to New York City, hoping for a spot on the stage at Catch a Rising Star before 1:00 AM so that he could perform his ten minute routine.

Then he would return home by 2:00 or 3:00 and begin the routine again at 7:00 when his daughter awoke and his wife left for work.

Billy Crystal did not become the entertainer and star that he is today because he was talented. He worked exceptionally hard, made enormous sacrifices, dedicated his life to his dream, and was smart enough to marry a woman who supported that dream.

By the way, he sacrificed to find the right woman, too. He transferred colleges as a sophomore, leaving Marshall University, a baseball scholarship, and a chance to play the game he loved at the college level for Nassau Community College and later New York University after meeting his wife and knowing that a long distance relationship would probably not last.

Rather than risk losing the woman of his dreams, he gave up baseball to chase her down.

The man understood how to make sacrifices.

So yes, Saturday was a great day for me. I loved watching something that I had written performed onstage. Hearing my words in other people’s mouths is always thrilling and makes me want to write for the stage again.

And yes, performing alongside the likes of Ophira Eisenberg, Tracy Rowland, and Matthew Mercier at The Liar Show was thrilling, too. Simply being asked to perform in this popular and well-reviewed show was an honor.

But it was a long, long road to Saturday’s payoff. Many, many miles.

Too often, I think that writers, performers, and other people striving for a career in the arts see those 1% Saturdays and dream the dream, forgetting about the 99% (or worse, glamorizing the 99%) that is required to make those Saturdays a  reality.

The best moment on Saturday for me was a simple one. Standing off to the side, watching these teens and tweens perform the show, I caught sight of my daughter, sitting in the audience, watching my show with rapt attention. Bopping her head to the music. Smiling. Leaning forward in anticipation. Laughing at my jokes.

This was better than all the applause I received that day.

 

Truth

So many people think it’s fun. Precious. Joyous. Something they will do in retirement.  

No, it’s work. It’s great work, but it’s work.

Writers Abroad and perhaps a writing program for adults, too?

For the last month, Elysha and I have been designing a summer camp for young writers called Writers Abroad. The Hartford Courant recently ran a piece about it. As of this week, we’re pleased to announce that more than half of the spots have been filled and we’ve received inquires that may fill most of the remaining spots soon.

Fortunately, we’ve managed to do this without any actual advertising. 

Even more surprising, we’ve also started to hear from teachers, college professors, newspaper reporters and other professional writers who have heard about Writers Abroad and are offering to volunteer to teach at our camp.

We are thrilled.

I hesitated to write about the program here until I was certain that we could enroll enough students to move forward with the program. Now that this has become a reality, I’m writing about the program here in case you may know a student who is interested in filling one of our remaining spots. We are open to students ages 12-16, and the only requirement for enrollment is an interest in writing. Details on the program can be found below.

One more surprise: After hearing about the program, I’ve heard from at least a dozen adults who have asked if I would consider teaching a writing workshop for them. A couple actually asked if it would be possible to enroll in Writer’s Abroad.

The answer to that question was no.

Elysha and I already teach a storytelling workshops as a part of Speak Up, but the idea of teaching a writer’s workshop is intriguing. I’ve tried to join writer’s workshops in the area before but have always been greeted with a certain amount of disdain and distrust. I’ve been asked (in not-so-friendly-tones) questions like, “Why are you here if you already have books in stores?” and “How did you find an agent?” and “Who did you know in publishing?”

I’ve always come home feeling disappointed.

Instead of attempting to find a workshop that was willing to accept me, I  gathered a group of writers and friends who serve the same purpose. We don’t meet as a group, but I send them my work and receive critical feedback from each one. 

But teaching a writer’s workshop for adults? Though it had never occurred to me, it’s something that I might be interested in doing.

If you might be interested in enrolling in a writer’s workshop, please let me know. I’ll gauge interest level and determine if this is something I’d like to plan and execute at some point in the future.
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Writers Abroad

The Program

The goals of Writers Abroad are three-fold:

1. Provide students with authentic writing instruction, from conception to final revision, from professional writers and teachers via a model that guarantees the three most important components to any writer’s success: time, audience and choice.

2. Provide students with a variety of writing experiences in a wide range of genres, allowing them the opportunity to experiment with their voice in a number of formats.

3. Provide students with an understanding of the writing process and the business of writing from the perspective of a professional writer.

Writing Abroad is a four week writing camp running from July 7 to August 1. Classes will be held on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00 AM until 1:00 PM.

Classes will be based in a conference room in the West Hartford Town Hall, but as much as possible, we will be using Blue Back Square and West Hartford Center as our classroom as well. We will take advantage of the library, the bookstore, coffee shops, restaurants, the movie theater and outdoor spaces in order to inspire and inform our writing. We will take advantage of the unique characteristics of each space in order to broaden our views of writing and begin to examine the world through the critical eye of a writer. It will also give students the ability to be outdoors while working on their craft, which we believe is essential given the time of year.

 

Students will write individually directed pieces based upon their interests and needs, including fiction, nonfiction, college essays, poems, songs and more. Idea generation will also be explored in depth, providing students with the chance to develop an extensive list of future writing ideas. They will receive individualized and small group instruction in regards to their own pieces and have many opportunities to workshop their writing with peers.

Students will also explore a variety of writing genres, using the unique environment of West Hartford Center and Blue Back Square as the impetus for much of this exploration.

Some examples include:

We will spend a morning reading food and restaurant reviews, and then we will eat lunch together and write our own reviews.

We will spend a morning reading film reviews, and then we’ll see a movie together and write our own film reviews.

We'll discuss screenwriting and visit with a screenwriter.

We'll learn about writing skits and plays and meet with a playwright.

We'll spend a morning learning about songwriting and meet with a songwriter.

We'll write personal narratives for the stage.

We'll tour the bookstore on more than one occasion, with different goals for each visit. We’ll identify popular and trending genres, discuss the marketing decisions involved in choosing cover art, examine the structure of picture books and much more.

We’ll spend time discussing the nuts and bolts of the publishing industry. We’ll examine the path that a book takes from the formation of an idea in the writer’s head to landing on an actual bookshelf. We’ll discuss the ways that writers and publishers earn income on books sold and discuss the growing world of self-publishing. We’ll also discuss the challenges and benefits of a career in writing and the best ways to prepare yourself for that career.

Most of all, we’ll be writing. Talking about writing. Critiquing writing. Revising writing. Presenting writing. Then writing some more. Students will choose topics for writing. We will suggest topics for writing. Fellow students will inspire topics for writing.

We will be capping the number of students in the camp at 12 in order to allow a great deal of personal attention but also the opportunity for collaboration and peer feedback. 

This small number will also allow for us to accept students with a range of writing abilities, though the desire to write is a must. Prospective students must have a passion for the craft, because the expectation is that we will be writing a lot. While our goal is to inspire students to write, they should arrive with some personal desire as well.

We are accepting students ages 12-16.

The cost of the camp is $1,200.

The Instructors:

Matthew Dicks is a published author, first with Doubleday Broadway and currently with St. Martin's Press. He has three novels in bookstores now and a fourth due out at the end of this year. His most recent book, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, has been translated into more than 25 languages worldwide and is an international bestseller. He has published work in The Hartford Courant, The Huffington Post, Education Leadership, The Christian Science Monitor and more. 

He is the co-writer of The Clowns, a rock opera that was produced for The Playhouse on Park in 2013 and is currently being considered for a New York theater festival, as well as The Tweets, which will be produced in July at a local summer camp.

Matthew has been teaching for the last 15 years and is a former West Hartford Teacher of the Year and finalist for Connecticut Teacher of the Year. In addition to teaching, he has conducted writing workshops for middle school, high school and adult students via colleges, museums and bookstores. He also tutors middle and high school students in writing and a variety of other subjects. 

Matthew is also a professional storyteller and public speaker. He’s a 10-time Moth StorySLAM champion who tells stories for organizations like The Moth, The Story Collider, Celebrity Death Match, The Mouth and many more.

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Elysha Dicks has been a teacher for 13 years. She began her career at Solomon Schechter Day School in West Hartford, Connecticut and later moved onto Henry A. Wolcott School, also in West Hartford. She has taught third and fifth grades and has also worked at a district reading tutor.

Elysha has a Master’s degree in educational technology and is the founder of Green Ink, an in-school design studio where students utilized Photoshop and other software applications in order to design and produce print and digital work for teachers and administrators in the school.

Elysha spent six years co-directing Tributes: productions based upon the lives of historical figures who made positive contributions toward ridding the world of hatred and discrimination. The program stressed teamwork and challenged the students to take the lessons of the past to rise above bigotry and injustice in their own lives.  

Together, Matthew and Elysha are the founders and producers of Speak Up, a Hartford-based storytelling organization that works to bring storytelling to the Hartford region in junction with Real Art Ways. Speak Up produces storytelling shows six times a year and conducts ongoing workshops on the art of storytelling.
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Matthew will be teaching classes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. He will be joined on Fridays (and other days as well) by Elysha Dicks for a more concentrated, intensive day of individual and peer conferencing.

If you are interested in registering for the camp or have any questions, please email us at matthewdicks@gmail.com.

My uninspired work space

The New York Times recently featured the workspace of five writers, including a photo of each.

I’ve always felt a little envious of writers and their workspace, since mine is often the dining room table and the commotion that surrounds it:

The children, the pets, the wife, the television in the next room, the phone, the sounds of cooking from the adjacent kitchen, the buzzing, ringing and beeping of modern-day toys and the constantly encroaching detritus of everyday life.

I try to escape to libraries and similar locations from time to time, but most often, it’s the dining room.

The Hartford Courant photographer came by a couple years ago to take a photo for a story about my most recent book and captured my writing space perfectly: 

The photographer asked me to show him my office, and I pointed at the table. He loved it. I told him that I would move my son and clean off the toys, mail, and other random objects on the table, but he said, “No, I love it. Just like this.”

“Sure,” I said. “It’ll make a great photo, but try writing like this.”

In reading the New York Times piece, I was happy to see that novelist Mona Simpson has a space similar to my own. After attempting to write in an office, she eventually reverted back to her home. The photograph is of her kitchen table, not unlike my own, but she also writes throughout her house.

Now I write at home. I revised the last 11 drafts, red-penciled the copy editing and marked the first-pass galleys at different places in the house; sitting on the floor next to the heating vent, on my bed, at the kitchen table, leaning back in my chair with my feet up on the desk.

Her kitchen looks a lot neater than my dining room table, but perhaps her two children are older and less destructive. Perhaps she was also smart enough to tidy up before the photographer arrived.

Either way, it was nice to see I’m not the only writer without a dedicated office filled with books, art, well appointed furniture, and an expansive view through a picture-perfect window.

Still, despite my success at the dining room table, I’d like to have an office someday. Perhaps like Simpson, I would ultimately reject it in favor of what I know, but I’m willing to give it a shot. It would be rather innovative to be able to write five whole sentences without a child asking me to play, a wife asking for a favor or a dog scratching for a bone.

Perhaps it would ruin my writing process and damage my creative process, but I'm willing to risk it. At least for a while.

A guy can dream.