Write What Haunts You

Photo by Joshua Sy

What haunts you? What images or moments have never left you? What do you keep revisiting again and again and again?

In the latest Glimmer Train bulletin, Melissa R. Sipin discusses how her stories are obsessions over such moments. She writes:

I am that kind of writer. You can call us tortured ones, silly ones, obsessive-compulsive ones that labor over each word and breath and inflection and erase erase erase until that one sentence flies on its own, bleeds into the next one.

No remnant of the first draft has remained, except for the one thing that started it all: my brother’s black question mark tattoo, impressed on his right forearm and four inches in height.

Read the full essay at Glimmer Train. Or, check out these other pieces on the writing life:

From Myth to Meh by Edwin Rozic
On Multiple Drafts by DM Gordon
Polyphony in Fiction: What Is It, and What Is It Good For? by Joe Vastano

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