SmokeLong Quarterly

What themes do you find yourself frequently writing about? 

As a young boy in Alabama, I lived in two dramatically different worlds. One, was the strict Southern Baptist type school, an environment that was borderline a religious cult. Secondly, the extreme freedom that my friends and I experienced after school and during weekend. We were allowed to roam free – little packs of feral boys. I often find myself daydreaming about those days, horrified at near misses and struck with homesickness.

You teach writing at Curtis Institute of Music. I’m curious if/how teaching writing to musicians is different from a general liberal arts student body.

Turns out, people who have dedicated their lives to excellence end up pretty interesting individuals. Plus, one of the critical elements to writing is to know the difference between good and bad writing. Good musicians are naturally self-critical, and good musicians understand the experience of fully losing yourself in the creative experience. Imagine a classroom of kids down with the pursuit of reading with curiosity and writing with high style. What’s more, there is something beautiful about learning a craft, like music, that immediately makes you happy when it is properly executed. This goes for even casual musicians. All of this makes for an exciting environment, where everyone is curious about the pursuit and destination of writing.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Two pieces of advice:

1. Reginald McKnight at the University of Maryland: Simplify
2. Pawlowski, University of South Florida: Tim, you have to love language.

And finally, our readers always want to know what kind of story our guest editors are looking for, so what would you love to see in the queue this week?

When I was around ten years old, I remember lying flat on my back in my bedroom looking at the overhead reading lamp. The bulb was missing, and for some reason, I had to know if the light was on or off. How could I find out? If there was only a way to determine the presence of electric current. In the absence of a lightbulb, I stuck my finger inside and found out. That’s what I’m looking for.