For many years I wrote about fiction, story, belief, ordinary life, and the questions that shaped my work. More than two thousand essays remain here—not because every one represents my current thinking, but because together they tell the story of a writer learning over time.
Search for a subject, browse by month and year, or begin with the most recent writing below.
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The archive begins with the most recent writing. Use the numbered pages below to move backward through time.
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Willa Cather on Making Art Through Troubled Times: A Moving Letter to Her Younger Brother
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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Joyce Carol Oates on What Hemingway’s Early Stories Can Teach Us About Writing and the Defining Quality of Great Art
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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Ray Bradbury on Failure, Why We Hate Work, and the Importance of Love in Creative Endeavors
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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Leonard Cohen on Creativity, Hard Work, and Why You Should Never Quit Before You Know What It Is You’re Quitting
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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Chinua Achebe on the Meaning of Life and the Writer’s Responsibility in the World
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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The Project of Literature: Susan Sontag on Writing, Routines, Education, and Elitism in a 1992 Recording from the 92Y Archives
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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John Updike on How to Have a Productive Daily Routine, and the Most Important Things Aspiring Writers Should Know
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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Think big, think far.
I know I know. I should be writing, but I got distracted by a memory that suddenly reappeared, a memory of a site I visited months, maybe years…
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William Faulkner’s Beautiful Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech About How Artists Help Us Live
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
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Herman Melville on Writing and His Daily Routine
I’m currently taking a writing, blogging, and coaching sabbatical due to family health issues. For now, I’ll repost selected articles from my Fiction Writing School. I encourage you…
Richard L. Fricks 