[This article first appeared in Lizard, Victoria University's Professional Writing and editing program's magazine. The University is in Melbourne, Australia where Meg Files did a Doris Leadbetter Teacher Exchange between Pima College and VU's Diploma Professional Writing and Editing. --ed] Writing is a lonely business, Ernest Hemingway said in his 1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech….
Author Bio & Article Archives
Author Archives: Meg Files
Meg Files and the Poetry of Home
This week, in honor of National Poetry Month, we are proud to share an article by Writing It Real in Port Townsend Writers’ Conference faculty member Meg Files I have lived in three countries, in eight states, in fifteen cities, and on one island. I have lived in nine apartments, one duplex, one condo, and…
Servings Per Container
After creating an exercise from which her fiction writing students wrote stories, Meg did the exercise herself. She says, “In my story, a woman is suddenly afraid to leave a grocery store. Why? As I began the story, I didn’t know. I had this scrap of paper that said ‘Fear of exiting a supermarket.’ So…
The Most Promising Fictional Characters are Obsessed
“Our most promising fictional characters are obsessed,” says Meg Files, Writing It Real correspondent and author of Write From Life: Turning Your Personal Experiences into Compelling Stories. “They’re looking desperately for love or passion or parents or fame. They’re searching for answers to questions they can barely ask. Their obsessions offer writers a way to…
Letter to a Young Perfectionist
Meg Files is a novelist, short fiction writer, creative nonfiction writer, poet and writing instructor extraordinaire. She has helped hundreds of students write and publish their writing, and she always takes their concerns seriously. Recently, when one student’s problem with writing lingered, Meg wrote a letter in which she imagines herself offering this student standard,…