Writing Home

Where the wild things are on tv

2012-01-27T10:18:00.001-05:00

In case you missed it, Maurice Sendak did a hilarious, curmudgeonly interview with Stephen Colbert this week. I'll embed it here because I think he made some valid points about children's books and the book industry. Part 1 The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak Pt. 1 www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire

In which I suddenly express a small amount of desire for an e-reader

2012-01-19T10:27:00.001-05:00

I admit that I've been pretty disdainful of eBooks in most past posts on this blog. But last weekend, I felt a glimmer of desire for one of the dang things. I was trying to squeeze all the new books that E-girl received for Christmas and her birthday into already packed shelves. They...wouldn't...fit. She is very sentimental. Suggestions that we give away some of the books she doesn't read

Spa party (or, Martha Stewart for a week)

2012-01-18T10:32:00.000-05:00

Most of my time and intention last week went into organizing a spa party for E-girl. Like a production assistant, I went around to various stores and web sites looking for just the right props/tools/party favors: small spray bottles, candies, tiny nail polishes, bath sponges, emery boards, a red heart tray... etc. I am not a Martha Stewart-type—and I normally loathe shopping—so this was not

Try doing this with an e-book

2012-01-10T08:43:00.001-05:00

Fun, whimsical video of what goes on in a bookstore in the after-hours.

The Flaubert option

2012-01-05T11:45:00.000-05:00

I am in the midst of my third bad cold/respiratory virus in less than 12 months. Is it karma? (I bragged "I never get colds anymore!" a year ago). Whatever the cause, this is my particular immune weakness right now and no matter how many vegetables I eat or how much zinc, vitamin C, or Chinese herbs I take, the colds stick around for several days. And make me tired—after I typed this first

Another woman's work rescued from the trash

2011-12-19T11:45:00.000-05:00

The December issue of Smithsonian Magazine includes a short article on Vivian Maier, whom it calls a "photographer of consequence." Never heard of her? That's because Maier, who worked as a nanny, didn't sell a print in her lifetime and rarely shared her photos with friends and neighbors. Her photos came out in the open only because she could no longer pay rent on the storage unit where they had

Once upon a time—The End

2011-12-13T10:38:00.010-05:00

I actually got excited when I first read about the new ABC show, "Once Upon a Time." Critics lauded it as a return to the family hour, comparing it to the old Sunday night standard, "The Wonderful World of Disney." That's because there is nothing on TV currently that our family watches together. We usually don't even channel surf in front of our kid in the evenings, since we don't know when a

A mission of salvation in a dark basement room

2011-12-07T23:37:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I scavenged through a dead woman's bookshelves. Although I don't know her name, or anything about her except that she was a former school teacher and a survivor of the Holocaust, I came to admire and like her in the couple of hours that I was there in her dark, empty house. The books we found there gave evidence of an intelligent person with eclectic tastes: hardcover, first-edition

Create something in 30 days (more or less)

2011-12-05T23:00:00.006-05:00

NaNoWriMo didn't work for me this year. But that doesn't mean you or I have to wait until next November to work under an artificial, Internet-based deadline to complete some type of creative work. Below I've compiled a list of web sites that encourage "high-velocity prose" (as NaNoWriMo bloggers call it) of any type within certain time frames: February: Picture Book Marathon - Write a picture

The most comforting sound I know

2011-11-18T17:39:00.000-05:00

What is keeping a journal but a need to talk with myself and make sense of things? As I sit here trying to figure out what to do with myself, what else to write, I am comforted by the scratching sound of the felt-tip pen as it moves across the page and back again. Perhaps it is the most comforting sound I know. It is the sound of my silent voice, the one that isn't heard in usual conversations.

NaNoWriMo Fail!

2011-11-09T10:40:00.000-05:00

I have written approximately 250 words, by hand, for NaNoWriMo this year. And while it is possible that I still might catch up—my expected word count should be around 15,000 words at the end of the day—it's looking pretty hopeless at this point. My excuse is that life got in the way. An unexpectedly complicated bathroom repair (somehow a leaky faucet and vanity replacement evolved into a big

A realistic NaNoWriMo goal?

2011-10-31T10:28:00.000-04:00

Late last night, in a fit of exhausted inspiration, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, even though I questioned recently whether I should attempt it again. This year I am being realistic—that is, not very ambitious, since it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to carve out enough time this week to start it off well. The working title of my forthcoming work: (NaNoWriMo insists that you provide a

The economics of the creative life

2011-10-19T12:13:00.004-04:00

Occupy Wall Street resonates with me because I was once young, out of college, and unable to find work. Even then, it was hard to find gainful employment with a humanities (Western Civilization) degree. But, in retrospect, things were easier three decades ago. I moved from California to Idaho and soon found work at a local bookstore. My top salary there was $4.65/hour, which allowed me to

NaNoWriMo or NaNoWriNo?

2011-10-12T13:41:00.000-04:00

A friend asked recently if I intended to do NaNoWriMo this year. I said I wasn't sure. Since that time, my potential answer has swung daily between "How could I?" to "How could I not?". That's because I'm in the midst of revising the middle-grade novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo last November. Without the pressure to write a novel in a month, I probably wouldn't have written this particular novel—so

#LikingTwitter

2011-10-04T09:42:00.000-04:00

Despite my earlier disdain for Twitter, I have begun to tweet a few times a week. It has helped ease my withdrawal from Facebook. And, unlike other social networking sites, it's surprisingly easy to do from my non-smart cell phone. But the real reason I like Twitter is: subject headings. (Once upon a time, my dream job was to be a subject cataloger at the Library of Congress. It was a vision of

Four days into my Facebook fast

2011-09-28T11:52:00.000-04:00

I vowed on my Facebook page (where else?) four days ago that I was taking a break from Facebook. But I have found it difficult to entirely avoid it because: people use to to email me; I get invites to local events sometimes; and not wishing a friend "happy birthday" seems rude when their birth date is noted there. Then there is the difficulty of communicating to/with live broadcasts. The Kojo

"I want real people!"

2011-09-26T13:57:00.002-04:00

When my son was a toddler, he didn't want to sleep in his own room. While the family bed concept might work for some people, I needed my sleep and found that hard to achieve with three bodies in a double bed, especially with a child as intellectually energetic as he was. He could easily stay up to midnight with only a one-hour mid-day nap at preschool. So we would tell him, "Go to bed, you've got

Necessary and unnecessary gestures

2011-09-20T13:09:00.000-04:00

I am finally revising my YA novel, moving from first draft to a sort-of second draft. This is where I am rewriting my too-much-telling-not-showing first chapter; cutting unnecessary adverbs; and starting to add "texture" and "layers." One of my attempts at texture is to add gestures to my characters. I figure when they're talking to one another, the reader should be able to know what they look

More literary maps (paper and computer-based)

2011-09-14T15:31:00.020-04:00

Illustration of the voyage of the Pequod, from Moby Dick, one of a series of 12 literary maps produced as a calendar by the Harris-Seybold Co. in the 1950s. From American Treasures of the Library of Congress. Often in the past, I've needed visuals as an aid in fully understanding a story. When I took a class on Dante's Inferno in college, I kept finding myself lost in the circles of hell

The Geography of Alice Munro (Literary mapping with Google Maps)

2011-09-12T11:12:00.060-04:00

One of my goals this summer was to read Alice Munro's Selected Stories in sequential order, to get a better feel for her evolution as a writer. Unfortunately, being an American, all the stories seemed to me to take place in that amorphous area called Canada—I imagined prairie-like towns with long winters and too-brief summers. Then I realized one day that perhaps I should look at an atlas to

Bertie Wooster plays the blues

2011-09-10T15:05:00.001-04:00

I gave my hubby the complete PBS "Jeeves and Wooster" series on DVD for our anniversary earlier this month. We just watched the episode where Bertie (Hugh Laurie) plays "Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors" (excerpt above). Then, only a day later, Laurie appeared on the "Today" show playing a song from his new blues album. (I couldn't link to it directly, so enjoy the YouTube video that Blogger

The dream of dictation, slightly dashed

2011-09-08T14:04:00.088-04:00

For a long time, I've had the fantasy that I can find software that will allow me to take long walks and write at the same time—a program that will convert my speech into typed words. It would be like having my own secretary/transcriber (or wife... see Tolstoy, et al.). So I downloaded a popular dictation app for my iPod and tried it the other morning. The results are mixed (see below). While

Nostalgic for the dark

2011-09-06T22:42:00.000-04:00

We went without power for a total of five days after Hurricane Irene. It wasn't a totally bad experience. In fact, the first couple of days after the power came back on, I felt nostalgic for the dark. Around 7 p.m., it would start to get dark inside the house and we would light candles at the dining room table, eating dinner and playing board games. Later, we each read by flashlight or lantern,

The continuing joy of paper

2011-08-29T14:50:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Irene passed through this weekend, hurling branches against our house all night into early morning. Acorns rolled madly across the roof and deck. In the morning, the yard was a chaos of oak leaves. And we were without power. No power means no Internet for us since it comes via FIOS (fiber optic lines). But, out on our driveway to greet us the next morning was our Sunday Washington Post

Publisher Profile: Sy Safransky

2011-08-19T12:18:00.001-04:00

The following interview was 23 years in the making. In 1988, while taking a graduate-level journalism course at UNC-Chapel Hill, I interviewed three local small press publishers for (what turned out to be) a never-published story—one of them was Sy Safransky, publisher of The Sun. In retrospect, I’m surprised and honored that Safransky took the time to speak with me, given the fact that he was,

A mostly lazy, lollygagging summer

2011-07-31T17:03:00.002-04:00

My daughter wanted a mostly camp-free summer and I have granted her that wish—one week of art camp (which she requested) will be her only camp this year. This means that I am the default activities director for what has become our two-person camp. I can grant her that wish because I work from home as a part-time editor. I know most parents can’t afford this luxury of time and must put their kids

The electronic rewriting of history, email by email, page by page

2011-07-21T14:31:00.000-04:00

Earlier this summer I visited my hometown of Moravian Falls, N.C., and discovered it has become a point of pilgrimage—some newcomer ministers are proclaiming its falls is a portal to heaven. The obvious image here is of people eager to slide down the falls to their deaths, but what they are saying is that you can talk to angels if you hang around there. Yes, the falls where teenagers once swam

Where The Wire was

2011-07-11T17:36:00.000-04:00

The Onion's AV Club is posting a two-part series on locations in Baltimore used in The Wire. Given my reluctance to visit Baltimore (post-Wire), I'm not sure I'll be making this particular pilgrimage. Baltimore: The Wire locations, part one

Just saying ‘No’

2011-07-06T15:30:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago I read an article about Karen Zacarías, a local playwright and mother of three, who confessed that she was only able to write (and be a good mom) because she had quit being a volunteer. The article struck a chord with me because I was at the start of my tenure as a high school PTSA vice president. Much of my free time was being spent in meetings, running events, and creating

Too many TV shows with predictable outcomes

2011-06-26T13:45:00.000-04:00

My spouse was watching a movie a few weeks ago (on the small TV in the kitchen that we use when washing the dishes), in which a group of teenagers were riding a school bus on their way to an non-school event. I could hear them making mindless chatter from another room of the house. I wondered why he was watching such a silly movie until I walked in the room and saw the Syfy logo in the bottom

There are some deaths that obit writers must look forward to...

2011-06-09T09:09:00.001-04:00

"As a writer, director and producer, Leonard Stern was a legendary (noun) in show business. He had an (adjective) career that took him to (geographic place) with (celebrity name). Fond of (article of clothing), standing (a number) feet tall with a gray (body part), he (verb) more than a share of (noun), including (liquid)." [from the obituary, Leonard Stern, TV writer and producer who

The writer plants a garden

2011-06-03T14:10:00.000-04:00

I haven't written much in the last couple of weeks because I've been spending all my free time trying to create a garden (or a few reasonable facsimiles of such). It's been so hot here lately that I race against the impending sun, working steadily from 8:00 until about 11:00 am—and then the sun rushes out of the shadows. Immersed in the heat and humidity (we've had several 100 degree or near-

Writer Profile: Pam Smallcomb

2011-05-20T11:00:00.011-04:00

I met Pam Smallcomb at a SCBWI-sponsored ABC (Author Book Club) event in March and liked her good humor and practical advice so much, I asked her for an interview. Pam is the author of several middle-grade novels including The Trimoni Twins series. She has recently begun writing picture books—I’m Not was published in January of this year and Earth to Clunk was published this month. Pam was an

Molly Bloom sings

2011-05-17T15:56:00.000-04:00

As I confessed in a post a while ago, I've never made it entirely through James Joyce's Ulysses. After a few futile attempts to get past the first section, I gave up—but that didn't stop me from reading Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy at the end, a passage that has become a cultural reference (Molly Bloom is the name of at least one bar and one band, and the speech has been widely quoted/recited,

Rediscovering the charm in "Charm City"

2011-05-09T15:17:00.001-04:00

As I confessed in an earlier post, I am slightly terrified of Baltimore, based on its fictional portrayal in David Simon's TV shows. Yet I know its reality is far broader and more welcoming than that narrow, menace-filled vision. So it was with gladness and relief that I attended the American Visionary Art Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race on Saturday. There I saw families and friends working

Invisible words, written in the ether

2011-04-27T11:07:00.001-04:00

My iBook has been in the throes of death for years. First, keys became stuck until their covers were discarded (thankfully, I rarely use "~"). Then Internet pages stopped loading. Finally the screen started to flash and sputter if not set at an exact 40 degree angle. So I began to eye other Apple laptops on eBay; after a few mornings of watching bids flash by, I grew weary of the whole exercise

Two recent electronic pieces on The Great Gatsby

2011-04-17T12:03:00.003-04:00

Like everyone else my age, I read The Great Gatsby in high school and thought, at the time, that it was OK. It took many years, and much more reading on my part, to realize how brilliant it is. (Maybe it's hard to appreciate genius until you've otherwise read a lot of crap—and it's hard to love a book you're required to read.) A Studio 360 podcast I listened to a few weeks ago (originally

Conversations and Connections writers conference in DC this weekend

2011-04-12T11:31:00.000-04:00

I went to the Conversations and Connections conference the last time it was held, a couple years ago, and came away with a list of Flash Fiction Markets. CC is a pretty good deal—you get three workshops, a speed date with an editor (they look over a page or so of your writing and give you immediate feedback), a subscription to a literary magazine, and a free book (your choice among four books

The disposible librarian

2011-04-07T11:27:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately, my work experience and graduate degree are in two professions that seem to be disappearing. Everyone knows about newspapers making their slow exit and, thus also, newspaper careers. But librarians? You'd think with such an information overload there would be more need than ever for librarians—to find and explain, weed out the unnecessary, and catalog the rest. Apparently not. I

Treadmill desks: can you really exercise and write at the same time?

2011-03-28T14:17:00.000-04:00

Suddenly I'm reading lots about treadmill desks (or vertical workstations), which allow you to write and exercise at the same time (see selected articles below*). This seemed like the perfect solution for me since exercise/writing is often an either/or choice with me and sitting in one spot for several hours gives me lower back pain. But the smallish bedrooms of my 1960s split-level house

The non-virtual books that will remain

2011-03-23T10:16:00.001-04:00

In a recent post, I gave my five arguments about why (some) books should continue on paper. But the reality is that the non-virtual books that are likely to survive may not be the picture books and beach paperbacks I advocated for, but books for collectors. This week CBS devoted a Sunday Morning segment to Taschen Books, which publishes large and beautiful books, sometimes costing thousands of

The digital picture book takes hold

2011-03-20T23:15:00.002-04:00

A week after I wrote my post, Five Arguments Against the Total Inevitability of E-books, the Washington Post Book World arrived with this article on the popularity of iPad picture books. So popular, in fact, the article states: Earlier this week, eight of the top 10 paid book apps on iTunes were picture books. Today’s digital-native children seem keenly interested in a story told to them on a 10

Writer Profile: Amy Bonaccorso

2011-03-18T11:19:00.004-04:00

If it hadn’t been for The Sun magazine, I probably would never have met Amy Bonaccorso—Amy and I joined the same Sun discussion group a couple of months ago. When the conversation turned to e-books that first day, I made my usual “E-books, yuk!” refrain. But Amy didn’t agree with me because, she said, e-books can offer higher royalties for authors. She knew, because her book, How to Get to 'I Do'

Five arguments against the total inevitability of e-books

2011-03-13T10:14:00.008-04:00

Surprisingly, many writers I know are starting to embrace e-book technology. They cite their portability—parents can load up a bunch of kids’ books for long car trips (which might mean more book sales); their paper-bag potential (no one will know you’re reading a romance novel on the subway); and their prospects for generous royalties (anywhere from 25 percent to nearly 100 percent, for

Writers' organizations and communities

2011-03-09T16:06:00.000-05:00

Lists of/Links to Writers' Organizations Writersmarket.com Organizations - An alphabetical list of selected writers' organizations. This list is easier to navigate than other WM databases since it's only six screens. However, it is not comprehensive; for instance, the Maryland Writers' Association is not on its list. Local Writers' Associations and Groups by State - This page offers a

The challenge (and joy) of writing picture books

2011-03-03T12:01:00.000-05:00

I’d never thought about writing a children’s picture book until I heard Pam Smallcomb speak at a SCBWI-sponsored ABC (Author Book Club) event this week. (I’d assumed that children’s picture book authors do their own art and I knew that my own doodle-y art would never sell.) But Pam has sparked my interest in writing within this concise and often humor-filled form. Not that she made it seem

Writers' conferences and residencies

2011-03-01T10:30:00.002-05:00

Here are a few sites to get you started. Writers' organizations will list annual (and, sometimes, regional and smaller) conferences on their web sites, so be sure to check the pages of those organizations in which you have an interest. • Writers’ Conferences and Centers - A (.org) web site sponsored by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs • Poets and Writers Conferences and

Women, rock?

2011-02-25T10:08:00.009-05:00

Alternative music radio station WTMD-FM recently sponsored a pledge-drive, week-long marathon of The Top 500 Desert Island Songs of All Time. (Listeners were asked to submit the five songs they'd want on a desert island, and the radio station compiled them into a play list). I was surprised that, in the Top Ten, there's not a single woman (unless you count The Talking Heads' Tina Weymouth, who

Failed attempts at filming paradise

2011-02-22T15:18:00.000-05:00

The primary reason I attended UC-Santa Cruz was for its green-gorgeous campus—the university is inside a redwood forest, on a tall hilltop overlooking the Monterey Bay. In the springtime, after the winter rains fed the fields, it was indescribably beautiful, with orange poppies and wildflowers clustering in the fields, and the sweet scent of laurel and eucalyptus permeating the air. Santa Cruz

Tripping over the ottoman into a male fantasy world

2011-02-17T12:03:00.000-05:00

Suddenly my daughter, E-girl, can't get enough of "The Dick Van Dyke Show." She begs to watch an episode of it whenever she has any free time (it's easily accessible on Netflix Instant watch). While I applaud its sharp writing and witty dialogue, there's one character that makes me a little uneasy: Laura Petrie, Rob Petrie's subservient, sometimes anxious wife. It's hard for me to imagine/

Web sites that list writers' contests, markets and grants

2011-02-15T10:52:00.052-05:00

Instead of having to search for individual web sites for contests, here are some sites that compile them for you: • Poets and Writers Submission Calendar - a month by month calendar that lists contests, fellowships and awards • Poets and Writers' Writing Contests, Grants and Awards database - includes details about creative writing contests—including poetry contests, short story competitions,

Baltimore: Life on the streets

2011-02-10T14:22:00.001-05:00

Thanks to David Simon, I am terrified of driving to Baltimore. As an avid viewer of Homicide: Life on the Street, and now The Wire, I have come to think of Baltimore as a thug-infested, open drug market, full of people who would just as soon kill me as not. I know this isn’t (entirely) true. Baltimore has neat museums and shops and restaurants, but I hardly ever go to any of them unless

Actually, I'd like to go back on the grid, thank you very much

2011-01-31T23:26:00.001-05:00

Strangely foreshadowed by thunder, snow descended upon us last Wednesday. Trees laden with the thick, heavy snow bent down to the ground, roads grew slushy and slick, and electric lines began to groan with the weight of all those accumulated flakes. Branches touched the power lines, setting off miniature fireworks. It was all very beautiful and even exciting at first—and then the power went out

AVSM Flashback: Birke R. Duncan

2011-01-24T10:51:00.004-05:00

AVSM Flashback is a new and occasional feature in which I'll reconnect with the people who once appeared in the pages of my publication, a very small magazine. During my self-appointed tenure as a small magazine publisher, I came to dread the once-a-week task of opening the submissions that were sent me. Most were tedious, poorly written prose and poems that weren’t worth my time or even the

High school time machine

2011-01-17T11:00:00.022-05:00

People from my past are popping up with more rapidity lately, due mostly to Facebook’s cheerful but insistent suggestions that I friend people with whom I have or have had the slightest bit of connection. Like thousands of other people are also, surely, doing, I’ve pulled down my high school yearbook to search for clues as to who these now-gray-headed people are. Last night I opened my high

Huck Finn and the N-word

2011-01-14T17:51:00.001-05:00

Much has already been said recently about the new version of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the N-word (which appears more than 100 times in the book) with “slave.” I’m not sure I have much to add to the debate, but I’d like to say something about people who condemn a work with which they have little real familiarity. When I was a reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, I lived in Boone and,

Paper romance

2011-01-06T10:38:00.026-05:00

Mostly, the Washington Post offers news of the right-now, whether politics, tragedies, or entertainment. But there are stories of regular people's lives there, too: in the obituaries (as I noted before) and in its relationship sections, specifically Date Lab in the Washington Post Magazine and OnLove in its Sunday Arts and Style section. As a former reporter, I should poo-poo this increasing

Zines live!

2011-01-03T15:41:00.021-05:00

I thought that zines were dead — or, at least, had mostly migrated to the Web — until I happened to visit Internationalist Books in downtown Chapel Hill last week. Maybe this was a surprise only because there are no independent bookstores within easy driving distance of my home in Maryland (save for the tiny bookshop that is more gift shop than book nook). But there in the back of the narrow

At least there are still jobs for journalists...

2010-12-22T10:30:00.011-05:00

Ever since I subscribed to Groupon a few months ago, I've been receiving short, witty blurbs in my Inbox everyday, each enthusiastically describing bargains and deals for restaurants, spas, and various types of instruction. Little did I realize that the people writing those Groupon blurbs represent a new wave of journalism, and that Groupon itself is becoming one of the biggest employers of

Suggested gifts for writers, or those who love good writing

2010-12-10T12:30:00.005-05:00

Anyone who really knows me understands that I am not the biggest fan of the Christmas season. I dislike the annual frenzied, consumer-driven ritual it has become, and the constant, media-inflicted we-must-save-the-American-economy guilt. However, if you love Christmas and/or feel the need to buy gifts, you might as well support good writing, and publications that deserve to continue. [Note:

Stephen Colbert's advice on saving the publishing industry

2010-12-09T09:32:00.011-05:00

In case you didn't see it a few days ago, The Colbert Report vividly described the last, desperate option available to the magazine industry. The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Cosmo Is Available in Mongolia www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogMarch to Keep Fear Alive

Yes I did!

2010-12-01T15:15:00.001-05:00

Grab the time and do it—that's what I learned from NaNoWriMo 2010. Because of that contest, I wrote a 50,011 word novel in 30 days, a book that otherwise would never have been written. I'm not sure that anyone can write a deeply nuanced and eloquent novel in a month—mine certainly isn't. But I didn't expect it to be. And that lack of expectation really gave me a wonderful freedom to write. The

An impromptu strategy session in the children's library

2010-11-23T16:12:00.001-05:00

How cool is this—I visited a local public library this morning and mentioned my YA novel-in-process to the children's librarian. She got so interested in the project that she pulled another children's specialist from the back room and we sat around talking about it for a good 15-20 minutes. I am at the point in my book where my heroine is going to seriously start "booking"—a verb I've made up

NaNoWriMo Day 21

2010-11-21T12:56:00.002-05:00

Today, on my 21st day into National Novel Writing Month, I am 28,499 words in—which might sound impressive until I hit the Stats bar on my NaNoWriMo Profile Page: I am 6,501 words behind. My suggested cumulative word count for the beginning of the day was 35,000 words. It's not from lack of interest or idea on my part; life has gotten in the way. My kid's two full days and two half-days off from

"Oh hi!" and other awkward ways to get your characters into a room

2010-11-13T15:41:00.002-05:00

A chance encounter with the cult classic, "The Room," reminded me how hard it is to get fiction characters smoothly transitioned into a scene. "The Room" is celebrated in various compilations and snippets all over YouTube for its poor acting, editing, and writing. In the 30-second edit above, someone has taken some of the most awkward entrance dialog from the movie. [This will probably be

How can we read good prose when we're reading so much junk?

2010-11-09T10:30:00.004-05:00

As my daughter and I stood in line at the grocery store yesterday, facing a display of magazines including Us, People, and The National Enquirer, she asked: "Why are people interested in reading about all these celebrities and made-up stuff?" "Well," I said, unloading food from my cart onto the conveyer belt, "I think people like to read about celebrities for a couple of reasons. Making fun of

Things I've learned from NaNoWriMo, five days in

2010-11-05T09:00:00.002-04:00

As promised in a previous post, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month. Here are some things I realized in the last few days because of it: • Writing under a timeline/deadline pushes words out of me. I am writing words I would never have put down on paper, in a genre (young adult fiction) I had never much contemplated before. • When you're writing this fast there is no time for

What should I write about when there is so much to say?

2010-10-31T15:13:00.120-04:00

As I said in my last post, I signed up for NaNoWriMo a few days ago, with the goal of sitting down on November 1st and writing a novel from scratch. It all sounded very spontaneous and exciting—I was going to start writing whatever popped in my head and see if I could carry on with it for 49,300 more words. But then, after I signed up, I checked their web site more attentively. They suggest I

Another monkey typing at the keyboard

2010-10-28T08:00:00.002-04:00

Like hundreds of aspiring novelists before me, I, too, have signed up for NaNoWriMo. What, you might ask, is NaNoWriMo? According to their web site: National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over

56 drafts and three little kisses

2010-10-26T21:43:00.004-04:00

After I wrote my post about Mary Amato's talk on revisions, in which she confessed that her last novel went through 56 drafts, I kept wondering—how did she keep track of it all? Did she have 56 different computer files, 56 print-outs, or 56 of something else? So, I emailed her and asked. Here is what she said: When I'm writing, I don't print out until I'm "done" with a draft. After I'm "done

The loneliness of the present moment

2010-10-19T11:40:00.030-04:00

I have talked a lot recently about journal keeping, but I've never actually shared anything from my journal in this blog. What's the difference between a blog post and a journal entry? The journal entry isn't written for public consumption, but, at least during the moments it is written, for the pleasure of writing. Later, maybe, with editing, it becomes something else. The paragraphs below are

Digging through journal pages, sometimes surprising artifacts are found

2010-10-14T10:30:00.000-04:00

Looking through an old journal recently, I was elated to find a photo of my Aunt Stella's bedroom pasted into one of its pages. It was within a sort-of collage I'd made as a tribute to my then-boyfriend in California. ("Thinking of him in North Carolina," I wrote on the opposite page.) Last spring, a writing teacher had asked me to describe Aunt Stella's house in greater detail in an essay I'd

Using WOW and other strategies to write and revise fiction

2010-10-11T16:00:00.008-04:00

I went to a terrific workshop given by Mary Amato yesterday for SCBWI's Author Book Club. Her topic was Revision, specifically the 56(!) drafts she went through for her last book, Invisible Lines. Mary spoke about all the levels of work she puts into a novel, from writing out all actions on wall charts, index cards, etc., to putting herself in the action she is describing. For instance, she had

The super-absorbent writer

2010-10-06T14:29:00.062-04:00

As evident in recent posts, I've become slightly obsessed with journals, mostly because I don't know what to do with my old journals. I don't want to pitch them, but I don't necessarily want to read through them on a regular basis, either. If you look too much to the past, how can you live fully in the present? Maybe if you call a journal a "writer's notebook" instead, it becomes a source of

Is time the best editor?

2010-09-26T11:24:00.109-04:00

A tiny sketch of San Miguel de Allende, which I drew while living there. As I quickly scanned through some of my old journals in preparation to write my last post, I was surprised at what caught my eye—not the dreams I wrote down in detail and tried to decipher, not the complaints about particular men, not the jejune explanations of what life is all about. I mostly liked the things outside the

The beauty of paper?

2010-09-23T09:00:00.003-04:00

I wanted to write a post about the value of writing on paper—how it is preserved no matter the software system or hardware storage mechanism. So I started to browse some of my paper journals from 25+ years ago; I was going to boast about accessing them simply by opening a filing cabinet. But opening this metal Pandora's box quickly led to the realization that most of what I wrote in my

More on Deborah Berger, the autistic knitter

2010-09-17T13:17:00.004-04:00

After I uploaded my post on Deborah Berger, whose knitted pieces are on exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum, I regretted that I hadn't contacted the museum to see if they could have provided more information about her. I'm glad to say that AVAM answered my subsequent email and sent me three photos of her pieces, as well as a short biography, which I'll include below. (As far as I know,

Writer Profile: Nan K. Chase

2010-09-13T11:00:00.016-04:00

I met Nan Chase more than two decades ago, shortly after I’d moved to Boone, N.C., to run one of the Winston-Salem Journal’s Northwest bureaus. Nan, who worked for the local Watauga Democrat, invited me over to her house for lunch, a short walk from my downtown office. I was amazed that she could converse freely with me while she ate and ground food in a hand-cranked gizmo and fed it to her baby

The weird world of Nancy Drew

2010-09-04T10:00:00.006-04:00

Assuming most young girls go through a Nancy Drew phase, I bought my tween the first two books in the series encased in a cute leather pocketbook set (seen above). She delved right in, working her way through the first few books without any problem. But when she got to the sixth book, she said that she was having trouble keeping up with all the new characters and that, well, it was getting a

XM-ed

2010-08-28T16:07:00.023-04:00

When I was growing up, public radio was a lifeline to a world beyond the confines of my little town. When the NPR correspondents were in NYC or California, I was there, too, not stuck in my room worrying about cruel high school hallways. It helped diminish my adolescent loneliness. So it pains me to admit that I've hardly listened to NPR for the last six months. That's because we bought a new

The nearly lost art of the autistic knitter

2010-08-21T22:00:00.009-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore for the first time. The museum features "outsider" art—art made, primarily, by people without formal training but with an intense need to create something unique or beautiful or visionary. There were many things I loved at the museum, especially: the mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic paintings of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein,

Sew long summer

2010-08-19T15:14:00.011-04:00

E-girl wanted to learn to sew this morning . We sewed a skirt for her and a doll out of scrap fabric, then an elegant skirt for her out of an old chintz curtain (Scarlett O'Hara redux). I am too busy and impatient to sew these days, and usually only get out the machine to mend things that are too valuable to toss. And, since fabric is so expensive now, there's really no financial incentive

What a writer does

2010-08-03T10:44:00.010-04:00

During recent bouts of insomnia, I've been reading through Alice Munro's Selected Stories. Unfortunately, the stories don't put me to sleep. I'm always surprised when I mention Munro to people and they admit that they've never heard of her, despite her repeated publications in the New Yorker and her short story collections. (But I hadn't hear of her myself until John Morris, during a workshop at

Web directories and resources for creative writing: Yahoo directory

2010-07-30T11:07:00.003-04:00

I was excited recently to discover that Yahoo still maintains a Web subject directory (which, ironically, I found via a Google search); even more excited to see that one of its subject categories is Literature > Creative Writing. [For those of you who don't know Yahoo's history, before Yahoo had devolved into a celebrity news port, its focus was on indexing the Internet—this was before the

The dark bookends of my reporting career

2010-07-20T13:26:00.014-04:00

When I started work at the Winston-Salem Journal in the summer of 1985, a dark cloud hung over me, especially as I walked to work from the public parking garage that first day of work. It was an unease that was with me until I was safely inside the building.The previous year, on her way to work, newly hired copy editor Deborah Sykes was murdered just a few blocks from where I was walking. (Sykes

Follow-up: The unbearable briefness of a dance career

2010-07-14T22:00:00.000-04:00

When I wrote about dance as an ephemeral art recently, I talked about how a dancer's career is shorter than a writer's because the body ages out of it. But I failed to mention the possibility of injury cutting that career even shorter. The near-constant possibility of injury makes dance even more precious and fleeting—something that viewers of So You Think You Can Dance have recently witnessed.

Follow-up: The Last Page (one more thing I like about Smithsonian Magazine)

2010-07-11T19:19:00.022-04:00

I failed to mention one of my favorite features in Smithsonian Magazine in my June 25th post: The Last Page, a one-page humorous essay that has appeared in the magazine for several years now. I often turn to it first when I pick up a new issue. Some of my favorite recent pieces include Green Eggs and Salmonella? ("Beware the hidden hazards lurking within popular children's books"); and Words to

The future of books

2010-07-05T10:01:00.008-04:00

• NPR's "On the Media" devoted a full hour to the future of books and publishing in its July 2nd show, Book It. (This is an updated re-broadcast of a previous show.) The broadcast includes an interview with Neil Gaiman on what authors in the future will have to do to make money. According to this show, formats like the iPad or the iPhone will be how books will be delivered in the future. Drat!•

Dance, the ephemeral art

2010-06-28T13:39:00.020-04:00

Athough I normally avoid reality shows (because I'm not interested in dieters, dysfunctional families, or desperate "celebrities"), E-girl and I have been making our way through taped episodes of the current season of "So You Think You Can Dance" (SYTYCD).Why? Because E-girl loves to dance. Even in utero, I realize now, she was trying to tap. She says she wants to be a professional dancer when

Magazines I actually read: Smithsonian Magazine

2010-06-25T20:53:00.020-04:00

Those who are regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I've been referencing Smithsonian magazine in recent posts. The reason is simple—my in-laws give us a membership to the Smithsonian every year, and the magazine comes free with the membership. But only in recent months have I become a steady and appreciative reader. Unlike the New Yorker, the Smithsonian arrives in my mailbox once

Why it sucks to be a (visual) artist

2010-06-23T12:59:00.003-04:00

"The Wilkersons’ costliest board was the 1972 painting Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa, a dazzling patchwork of stippled, dotted and crosshatched shapes, bought in 2000 for some $220,000—more than twice the price it had been auctioned for only three years earlier. The painting was done by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, an original member of the Papunya cooperative and one of its most celebrated.

To overkill a mockingbird: fiction creates a new geography

2010-06-21T09:37:00.003-04:00

This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is getting a lot of press. Invariably, in the articles I've read so far, the authors lament the commercial enterprises in Monroeville, Ala., (Harper Lee's hometown) that have sprung up as a result of the book. These include: the Mockingbird Grill, Radley's Fountain Grille, the Mockingbird Museum, and all the

The poetry of the dead zone

2010-06-16T10:07:00.011-04:00

Many times in the past, I'm sure, I rolled my eyes if I saw an old person poring over the Obituaries section in the newspaper. I thought it was morbid, their trying to find a familiar face or life, perhaps also trying to see who among their elderly friends had made it through another week. But more and more these days, my eyes are drawn to that section of the Washington Post. Maybe it's because I

Novel conclusions

2010-06-10T09:00:00.004-04:00

That weird Lost finale a couple of weeks ago continues to spark my interest in how creative works reach a conclusion. I mentioned memorable TV show endings in my last post—but what about works of fiction?Is there a written ending equivalent to Bob Newhart waking up next to the wife from his first show in his second show's finale? Or, would something like that come off too gimmicky or ridiculously

Memorable endings on TV

2010-05-28T14:21:00.013-04:00

Since the "Lost" finale, I've been thinking about memorable TV show finales. Apparently I'm not alone. I googled "memorable TV show endings" and found links to lots of critics and bloggers weighing in on the same topic. The freshest commentary on memorable endings that I found was on the NPR "Day to Day" web site and its related blog—that's probably because the show ends today and for the last

Lost ending

2010-05-27T12:35:00.007-04:00

Back in October, I wrote a post about how the TV show "Lost" would end. I had no predictions, given that I was not a steadfast fan (I mostly quit watching after the second season), but I was excited about how the writers were going to finish the tangled mess it had become. I fiercely hoped the writers wouldn't pull a dumb, soap opera-ish deus ex machina ending, or use one of those moldy old "

Celebrity writers

2010-05-16T11:43:00.011-04:00

CBS Sunday Morning had a Mo Rocca segment today on comedians and actors who perform dramatic readings of celebrity writing in a New York theater show called Celebrity Autobiography. The writing used in the show is so bad you wonder how it managed to get published. The autobiographies were all ego, no eloquence. How could it be this bad with ghost writers and editors in on it?The worst writing

Suppressing my inner-Andy Rooney

2010-05-12T14:04:00.011-04:00

In my last post, I tried to get all philosophical about the ridiculous cost of private colleges, and how this is going to push out more creative poor kids. Or something like that. But what I really wanted to do was to launch into an Andy Rooney-esque kvetch about the high cost of things these days, which would have sequed into a "back in the good old days" essay on how I only paid $5000 for a

In which I riff on college costs and creativity

2010-05-07T20:20:00.023-04:00

Just finished the Smithsonian magazine article on Wayne B. Wheeler, the forgotten man behind Prohibition. Though the story was full of interesting facts—like the strange political alliances that formed between progressives and southern racists—the fact that grabbed me most was this:Wheeler had put himself through Oberlin College by working as a waiter, janitor, teacher and salesman. There’s no

Know your audience

2010-05-03T13:49:00.017-04:00

I loved A Wrinkle in Time when I read it in elementary school—I still list it among my favorite books of all time. To read about an awkward, adolescent heroine with braces and low self-esteem who saves her brother, and possibly the fate of the entire universe, was deeply gratifying. It's one of the things that got me through early adolescence.I shared it this winter with E-girl, my tween-aged