Nina Schuyler's Blog
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Oct.04.2011
“How I love you, she always wanted to say, and you can never know it. I would die for you without a thought. You have given to my life its sheerest, its profoundest pleasure. But she could never say that. Instead, she would say, “How was school?” “Was lunch all right?” “Did you have your...
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Sep.22.2011
In Stephen O’Connor’s short story, “Ziggurat,” (from his short story collection here comes another lesson) a Minotaur discovers a new girl sitting at the computer playing Ziggurat, Panic! And U-Turn. “This was the pine-paneled section of the Labyrinth, which is where the Minotaur had been...
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Aug.26.2011
If you're needing a spark to ignite your writing, please take a look at Able Muse's new 30-day writing program:
http://www.ablemuse.com/able-muse-30-day-writing-program
Only $20.00 for all 30 days.
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Jul.20.2011
I recently assigned F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to my graduate creative writing students. More than a couple students told me they’d already read it. Implicit in that comment was the query—why bother reading it again?
It’s a good question. Why read something again? There are hundreds...
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Jul.17.2011
Flannery O’Connor writes in The Nature and Aim of Fiction:
“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions.”
She goes on to cite “a lady who...
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Jun.03.2011
I really enjoy surrealism. Here's my latest in short story form, "The View From Over Here," published in The Battered Suitcase, Summer, 2011: http://vagabondagebookscom.ipage.com/bookstore/
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May.29.2011
Lydia Kann’s “The Arrival,” (which earned an honorable mention in The Nimrod Literary Awards, The Katherine Ann Porter Prize for Fiction, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry Vol. 54, No. 1) makes an art form out of the style technique called ellipsis--that wonderful way of leaving...
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May.25.2011
In Melanie Rae Thon’s new collection, In This Light, published this month (May 24) by Graywolf Press, the short story, “Tu B’Shvat: for the drowned and the saved” is a new wrinkle in Thon’s oeuvre.
We are no longer in the world of street kids, runaways, addicts, the rural poor or prostitutes....
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May.12.2011
Afterwards, we gathered around my mother's hospital bed.
Once she had blond hair, the color of wheat. Everyone wanted to touch it. When she walked into a room, heads turned to see the woman who glowed, blond and pale, a Nordic queen.
My father tells the story of how he fell in love with my mother...
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May.11.2011
You want this baby. At 40-something, your clock has about three minutes to go. It's a boy, a healthy, everything-looks-normal boy.
Seven years ago, you were indoctrinated into the world of boys. Who would have thought one of your deepest and most profound relationships would be with someone who...
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May.03.2011
The San Francisco neighborhood was lousy. A burned-out house sported thick ivy on its charred front steps, and a fire-retardant chair boldly squatted in the front yard. On the telephone poles were homemade signs for a lost black and white dog.
I made my way to a gray-shingled house with rotting...
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Apr.25.2011
My friend collects rare coins that dazzle and sparkle in her red leather album.
I collect stunning sentences. I've got sketchbooks full of sentences that sing and cast a light on days when my sentences resist or turn awkward.
Sometimes before I begin writing, I'll open my journal and hear the...
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Apr.03.2011
The stream-of-consciousness writer uses many techniques to capture the private, often incoherent nature of the mind, and, at the same time, bring coherency so the reader can understand. One of these techniques is suspended coherence, in which something in a character's mind is at first...
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Mar.22.2011
If you're interested, I've reviewed The Mother Who Stayed, by Laura Furman, editor of the PEN/O. Henry Prize series. The review is on The Rumpus.
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Mar.05.2011
I've just stepped out of the narrative dream, Out Stealing Horses, the dream and novel of Per Petterson, a Norwegian writer. Dream-like because of his long sentences, which rely, for the most part, on coordinating conjunctions, and once you've stepped into one of his sentences, it's hard to step...
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About Nina
Nina Schuyler is the author of the award-winning novel, “The Painting,” which was named by the San Francisco Chronicle as a Best Book for 2004 and by MSNBC as a “fearless debut.” She earned her undergraduate degree at Stanford University, a law degree at...
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Causes Nina Schuyler Supports
Environment California
Sierra Club
National Resources Defense Council