Brad King said there was a good chance my story wouldn’t make it in the book during our last meeting. I’d received the previous edits to my story a month prior. Only incremental progress was made between those times. My story is about a trip to Guinea, West Africa that I went on five...
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So close I was to forgetting. So close I was to walking away.
Invictus Volume I was the first time I had ever worked in a writing group. In fact, it was one of the only times in college that I ever volunteered to participate in any group activity. Outside of my time in the military, I’ve never been much of a team player. Groups have never...
Writing Together
I was the last of the Invictus writers to leave our writing group on Saturday evening. We began early Friday morning and continued editing through the next day passing around our stories to share with each other. Some of us needed help in understanding our scenes while others just needed to talk through their...
While I Don’t Believe in Awards…
I realize that some of you do. As such, I’m going to begin collecting long-form, student writing competitions at Invictus. At least, I will do this until you tell me to stop. This is The Mayborn Literary Non-fiction Conference, which has a student essay competition. If you enter and win, we will find a...
Thoughts on writing
As journalism major, I am always writing stories about other people. I sit there with my pin and my tape recorder, I interview them, trying to figure out the truth about someone or something else. As a creative writing minor, I hide behind vague fragmentary poetry and fictional characters I made up inside my...
On Writing
At some point, every writer sits down to tell the story of what it means to be a writer. We are naturally storytellers so it’s inevitable that during a period of reflection we begin to pass along the wisdom we’ve gleaned to those who stumble after us. Of course, none of us have any...
second thoughts
I take back pretty much 100% of what I wrote in my last blog post, all that soapbox nonsense about what makes a writer. I emailed Brad the first draft of my story tonight. Despite what friends and family and faithful blog readers have told me over the years, I am not a writer....
The Writer…Teacher
I sat down and watched Charlie Rose interview David Foster Wallace on Sept 12, 2008. I remember the day I watched it for two reasons: Wallace was my contemporary writing hero. A man who wrote words in a way that spoke to me. At the time of his death, I was 4 months and...
How creating and building will take you everywhere
Writing a short work of non fiction is nothing to scoff about as I’m sure all of the Invictus writers and contributors know. It takes a well disciplined mentality and a strong sense of determination to finish your story to completion. It is an endeavor that taxes your mind and morals to the limit,...
The satisfaction felt after destroying something that you’ve created
I’ve thrown out ten-thousand words of work on my essay for the Invictus project. The story was convoluted and had lost most of its meaning. I was trying to cram too much into it and the writing was beginning to be disorienting. I was pitting myself up against too many conflicts. I was frustrated...
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