My Words Fly Up
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
More Than Simple Details
I love long, lyrical descriptions in books and stories. Not necessarily Henry James, but I enjoy exact and detailed descriptions of people and places. Some readers do not. They are happy with the bare bones so they can rush on with the story. Writers vary too, some preferring to tell a reader precisely what a
The Big Muddy
Writers have a story—or even stories—in them that are intensely personal, stories that they have to tell. Often they experienced something painful or life altering or tragic, and it sits in their gut like a river clogged with mud and weeds and dead fish. Their creativity is stopped up by this foul water—what I call
What the Lion Did
The September 2012 issue of Shambhala Sun contains an intriguing article by Andrea Miller entitled “Pure Fiction.” Miller talks with three novelists, two of whom practice Zen or Buddhism. The third, although not a Buddhist, has been influenced by Buddhism. All three writers, and Miller, make interesting connections between Buddhism or Zen and fiction, but
Poetry
Along with the two writing classes I teach, for the past two summers I have led a four-day writers workshop at Twin Farms in Wakefield, NH. I have never had a poet in any of my classes, but two poets have attended Twin Farms both of these past two years. One of those poets, Anne,
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.