In case you haven't noticed, I love to talk and write about writing (when I'm not actually writing). Another confession: I love to get mail. Ask anyone in my immediate family who's the first one to the mailbox and they'll all look at me. Constantly checking my email to see if anything interesting has popped up? Guilty.
For the past year and a half I've had the pleasure of sounding off here about being a Writing Geek in the 21st Century, defined as someone who has led a fairly rich writing life but who doesn't necessarily sit at the "cool kids" table of the literary cafeteria. These Geek's Guide to the Writing Life posts represent my attempts to support people like me, people who want to write and who are trying to figure out what that means for them. They're based on my own experiences as a writer for the past twenty-five years, a writer with a foot in both the creative and academic worlds. I've had the chance to say a great deal about this here, in my book Rethinking Creative Writing (now available on kindle) and online in other venues, like this recent interview on Ploughshareshttp://blog.pshares.org/index.php/writing-in-a-changing-world-craft-readerships-and-social-media/.
That's all well and good, and I'm sure I still have more to say, but it's time for me to look beyond my own experience. That's where "Dear Writing Geek," comes in. From time to time, I'd like to use this space to answer your own questions about the writing life in the twenty-first century. What are you curious about or struggling with as a writer? Finding the time? Explaining your choices to your friends and family? Wondering about whether to pursue further education? Starting a writing group? Functioning as a writer in academia? Teaching creative writing? The possibilities, as they say, are endless.
Just about the only writing-related questions I can't answer are those asking me to read and comment on manuscripts--I get a huge number of these requests already, most practicing writers do, and if I responded to them all I would have no time to do my own writing or respond to my students' writing, which I actually get paid to do.
I'll probably write a future post on how to find feedback for your work in order to address this issue.
So go ahead--what writing questions have been nagging at you? What do you want to know? Email them to dearwritinggeek@gmail.com and I'll answer selected questions here. You'll want to give yourself a pseudonym or I'll come up with one for you--I'm not a fan of asking anyone to share more information that is absolutely necessary.
Humor me--ask away!