Craft Capsule: A Bird in the Sky
Simon Van Booy puts inspiration and the writer’s realm of possibility into perspective.
Craft Capsules
In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.
Craft Capsule: Infinite Distance, or The Starry Archipelagoes
Dan Beachy-Quick explores the infinite possibilities of poetry and the idea that metaphor can be a philosophy, and poetic craft a means of living a life.
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Craft Capsule: Rhyme and the Delay in Time
Poet Dan Beachy-Quick considers rhyme, easily derided in workshop but able to make of the mind a wind-chime.
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Craft Capsule: Hundreds of Eyes
Dan Beachy-Quick imagines the poem as a peacock with tail outspread, and the phosphorescent circle on each feather an actual eye. The poem lets us see through every eye.
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Craft Capsule: The Craft of Humility, the Craft of Love
A poet and essayist recalls his personal introductions to poetry and its craft during his younger years.
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Craft Capsule: Every Novel Is a Journey
Authors share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: Tayari Jones completes the journey of writing her novel An American Marriage.
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Craft Capsule: Finding the Center
Authors share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: finding the center of your story.
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Craft Capsule: The Scourge of Technology
Authors share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: writing around tech in contemporary fiction.
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Craft Capsule: Finding Your Story
Authors share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: finding the story that challenges you.
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Craft Capsule: Real Time vs. Page Time
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: considering process when writing a scene with action.
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Craft Capsule: The Art of Active Dialogue
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: writing active dialogue without the use of gerunds.
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Craft Capsule: On Reading Aloud
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: reading aloud.
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Craft Capsule: On Endings
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: Is anything ever really over?
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Craft Capsule: We Get to Make a Mess
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: the messy art.
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Craft Capsule: Run On
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: the energy of long sentences.
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Craft Capsule: Before Craft, or Hug Your Independent Bookseller
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: remembering the life-saving importance of reading.
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Craft Capsule: Memory, With Soundtrack
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: how art and pop culture influence memory.
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Craft Capsule: Loving the Rubble
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: the memoirist’s curse.
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Craft Capsule: Gin and Scotch Tape
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: the pleasures and pitfalls of figurative language.
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Craft Capsule: Left Brain, Right Brain
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: Gregory Orr’s “Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry.”
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Craft Capsule: The Art of Targeted Revision
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: assigning clear and objective tasks during the revision process.
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Craft Capsule: Beware the Indeterminate “It”
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: revision that will force your verbs into action and clarify your intent.
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Craft Capsule: Find Your Metaphor
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: developing a metaphorical model for your genre.
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Craft Capsule: Tolstoy’s Short Chapters
A novelist explores the finer points of writing fiction in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: the psychology of short chapters.
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Craft Capsule: Visual Prompts
A novelist explores the finer points of writing fiction in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: the beauty of the bulletin board.
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