Write the Book That Keeps You Awake at Night Scared

Do you have a project that confuses you, or feels dangerous? In the latest Glimmer Train bulletin, novelist Mark Wisniewski discusses three things he’s learned about writing that he wishes he’d been taught. One of those things? How to search your gut-sense for your “one big story.” He writes:

This is not the story of your life. This is not your version of the best-selling novel everyone’s talking about. This is that one tangle of somewhat imagined, somewhat overheard, somewhat experienced events your spirit relates to with authority. Of all the stories you could tell, it’s the weird one. The one whose emotional terrain can bring you to tears. The one that keeps you awake at night scared that maybe, if it were published under your name, so-and-so might get upset and speak ill of you.

Click here to read his entire essay over at Glimmer Train.

For more insights into the writing life:

• The Fog of Creation by Nellie Herman
• In Search of Art by Julia Strayer