The patron saint of outlining - the bespectacled siren who sings to me from his spotless rock - is P. G. Wodehouse. — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Herta Muller, Mo Yan, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio - for many of us, the Nobels have become doubly educational: We simultaneously learn of an… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Writing is a sufficiently lonely and mysterious pastime that I don't begrudge myself a talisman or two, so long as they don't become ways… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Literature is one of those realms in which giving out prizes can seem not merely dubious but positively obtuse. — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
During the couple of years it took to write 'At The Bottom of Everything', I decided, on the sort of hopeful whim that occasionally… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
A short-story collection is harder to formulate pithy sentences about. — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
We humans, just like the animals in our zoos, were born into bodies whose workings are both mechanistically predictable and unfathomably complex. Put in… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Literary interviews are inevitably packed with the nuts and bolts of how writers do their work, and there's very little that aspiring writers do… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
A novel is no mere assemblage of gears; it is a wild and living being. And how are you to discern the intentions of… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
True atonement isn't the periodic shaving of karmic stubble via confessional; it requires deep, truthful change. It means doing the hardest thing of all:… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Beginning in middle school, the era of wide-margined, Bible-paged anthologies, short stories develop unpromising associations - and these associations often linger through college, when… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Every morning as I begin my work day, my computer presents me with the usual array of garbage: email, Twitter, updates on the state… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Enrichment happened to be my favorite time of day in the Children's Zoo, since it offered relief from the security-guard-esque standing around that makes… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think there ought to be a coat of arms for all of us who listen to Oberst's band Bright Eyes past the… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
To learn a piece on the piano - even a simple one - has proved every bit as agonizing as writing a chapter in… — Ben Dolnick Copy Share Image
