If my life in books counted off the page, I could boast quite a social life. My diverse bibliodiet of fact and fiction includes Pulitzers I study, tracing the contours of the words for clues to their savoir-faire. Best thing is when I fall in, pestled upon a page of genius. I feel ridiculous. Don’t… Read More Writing: A Hermit’s Journey
The more I write, the more I am taken with it, the magic of the word. Turn the wrist, hold out a balm. Flick, and you have a blade. To be able to put out one, two, three words for a title and draw people in; convince them to pause in their hurried steps and… Read More Writing 101: Sacred and Simple
Poets are strange – Why can’t they just call the spade a spade? And what’s a rock but rock: sandstone, shale from the tiredness of weather? Coal and limestone, plant and animal dross — but nature wastes nothing. Why do poets look for metaphors under every rock, the walls that hold the creek, earth that… Read More Poets Are Strange
I don’t like having more than one of anything. It feels wasteful. I mean, one hairbrush will do. My wedding dress and cake had no decorations, no ribbon or flower. Nothing. In my day-to-day, I map out the most efficient route for errands. Lose time and you’ve lost the irretrievable. It hit me that the… Read More I Enjoy Stripping
Writing is treasure mining, isn’t it? The sifting of options among all that language has to offer. In the process, leave the hollow expressions that lie buried from overkill to rest in peace. Settle on what’s attractive and weighty. Don’t clutter your collection with dry, ossified castoffs of nature that add nothing to your art.… Read More The Writing Process II, Part 2: Let the Clichés R.I.P.
I got to do the fun stuff with my students when I taught the Gifted and Talented in the 90s. The elementary school kids in the program left their classroom and came to me bright-eyed, bushy-taled. Grounded in the basics, they were ready for a session of poetry or creative writing. Here are some activities… Read More Young Writers in Their Dreaming
In all the talk about how to write, I began thinking about why we even try, backtracking to why we read. According to Stephen King, “The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing.” (On Writing) What I want to understand, though, is not the intellectual… Read More The Writing Process II, Part 4: Why We Read
The Process is as rich as there are writers. I now see that in my earliest years of writing I had been trying on words for size, putting out what I thought sounded good. Of course sounds are what give birth to words, and it is the thrilling privilege of writers to show communication is… Read More The Writing Process II, Part 1: Keep It Real
Put a touch of magic in your ending. The last impression you leave of your writing rests on your closing thoughts, which will ring more loudly than the opening sentence that well may have gone forgotten halfway into your narrative. In my school years, I struggled not to copy my first paragraph in the last.… Read More The Writing Process: The Final Word
In extension of The Writing Process: Sensory Details, Part 4, I share a handful of poems a few private students produced years back. The wording fell into place once the ideas came to life in the brainstorm of senses (explained in Part 4). Tip of the day: quotes wake up poems with the element of… Read More The Writing Process, Part 5: Keep Painting
A Holistic Journey 