Hard to overestimate how influential Robert A. Caro is in writing and journalism, “The Power Broker” and then his multivolume biographies of LBJ. I was fascinated too by his slim volume, “Working,” which contained a fair amount about how he reported and wrote. My favorite piece of advice: “Turn every page.” It’s similar to a Continue reading

Wise words from Bob Dylan here: “As you get older, you get smarter and that can hinder you because you try to gain control over the creative impulse. Creativity is not like a freight train going down the tracks. It’s something that has to be caressed and treated with a great deal of respect. If Continue reading

Before there was Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” and a few years after Donald M. Murray’s writing-as-a-process, Peter Elbow espoused the concept of freewriting and voice in “Writing Without Teachers” and “Writing with Power.” Elbow died this month. I follow a daily writing practice, that old Latin aphorism, never a Continue reading