How Should a Writer Be?

How do you think about the practice of turning your thoughts, conversations, and opinions into material? How do you find ways to make your obsessions timely and relevant? What is your relationship to the news cycle? How do you strike a balance between time spent out in the world and time spent writing in isolation? Each writer must grapple with these questions. Nearly every writer, in doing so, looks to others’ philosophies on the writing life as guides for navigating a career that is at turns rewarding and harrowing, joyful and maddening.

But while Annie Dillard, Stephen King, and John Gardner (to name a few) have written expert, evergreen advice on the writing life, some of it can feel outdated in the age of digital publishing. We face several new strategic choices, not only concerning our work itself, but also concerning how to develop our personas as authors. Is carving out a niche preferable to demonstrating versatility, or is it simply important to keep writing more and varied work? How do you balance writing for assignment with the articles you’re dying to write?

To discuss these questions, three early-career writers — Jo Livingstone, Mitch Moxley, and Margaret Eby — will join us for a panel, followed by a brief Q&A.