Bill Torgerson

March 28, 2010

Real Life in Fiction

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway. –Stephen King, from On Writing In my short story “Eye Contact” a woman texts her husband a kiss “mphwaa,” (or something like that—I need Megan here to remind me of how to spell…

March 22, 2010

Fear and Writing

A friend of mine wrote to me scared about an opportunity he has in that his girlfriend is going away for 21 days and he has practically the whole time to himself to write. He’s wanted to write more but he suspects that he might instead sit around in his underwear, let the dishes pile…

March 15, 2010

An Argument For Church From Someone Who Doesn’t Go

My father-in-law Jim recently passed away from cancer. Several weeks before his death, my wife received a call that her dad had checked into hospice. We began packing immediately and drove 800 miles through the night to North Carolina so that we could be sure to see him as soon as possible. In addition to…

March 12, 2010

What Casued You to Start Writing?

Around the year 2000, I felt like I had a crummy life. I understand that this feeling of crumminess was very relative. The world is full of people whose struggles were much deeper than mine. I was divorced, an experience that caused for me to for a certain length of time to believe that God…

March 6, 2010

How Would I Improve Public Education?

How Would I Improve Public Education? Exhausted and frustrated, five years ago I quit public education. In the years that have followed, I’ve tried to think about ideas which might have improved the situations within which I worked. I mean for this to be a catalyst for conversation, and I’m happy to have these ideas…