My Words Fly Up
Back to Beginnings
As I wrote earlier, I sometimes begin a new session of classes with a lesson I call Beginnings. And so I did again with the new winter class in Newburyport. Rather than going to the local bookstore to look for terrific openings, I checked books that either I, my son, or my daughter own. I
Patting Myself on the Back
Yesterday I sent down to my agent the complete, revised manuscript of As the Crow Flies. I am sure Paige will make revision suggestions–and she is usually right on the mark with her suggestions–but I am pleased with this version. Now I can move on to my next book idea and get the characters that
Practice
A friend of mine took this photograph, one of about twenty he snapped of this grasshopper on a summer day. And one of the thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures he took over his lifetime. Just a visual example of that old joke: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.
Know Thy Characters
As an editor, teacher, and writer, I always read with an eye toward learning about the writing craft. My books on writing could take flight in a strong wind, so many scraps of paper stick out of them, marking important points that I want to teach or use in my own work. The most easily
Joyful Noise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE Regardless of how you celebrate–or don’t celebrate–the holiday season, the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah is an amazing, uplifting piece of music. So enjoy this flash-mob performance of it–although since this video has had more than 40 million hits on YouTube, some of you may have already seen it.
Introducing As the Crow Flies
Starlings on Otmoor on YouTube For much longer than I want to contemplate, I have been working on a novel entitled As the Crow Flies. I wish I could spend all of my time writing, but there’s the job that brings in the money to pay for the food that the teenage children eat; and
Be Social
MY WORDS FLY UP
In which I blog about the days I write and the days I don’t write; about teaching about writing; about reading (which is never enough); and occasionally about music, because sometimes a three-minute song can tell as good a story as a novel.