Writing about Writing
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Yes, but the writer must have the passion, intensity, and honed skill of the swordsman. Writers must also have the courage to pull their destiny from the stone.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” It might not be quite that bad, but “let your reach exceed your grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
That’s why we are here.
How Family Stories Start
Family stories don’t begin with writing. They begin with living, and observing, and remembering. Family stories begin somewhere and develop somewhere else and someone notices. That’s what happened to me and it had to do with something I saw in a china cabinet…
Write Stories People Can’t Put Down
How a little-known technique can transform your storytelling.
What If More Women Wrote About War?
It’s not a question of their opinions. Women are not less fierce than men, less dedicated to ideals, less passionate about beliefs. But women, at least when they are not trying to succeed in a man’s world, write differently than men. They use…
The Dread Writer’s Block
Since way back – I’m talking graduate school – I’ve been interested in why people who love to write and want to write and have a story to tell get stuck. They’ve been sailing along and then suddenly they are like one of…
The Hero(ine)’s Journey
A few days ago I started a challenge called Write Your Way Through This which promised a series of daily prompts to record this time of anxiety and social distance. After only two prompts, I had an idea: group the prompts to roughly…
Boomers as Elders
The shutdown hasn’t just lasted for a few weeks. We are all still on high alert, our anxiety heightened by political and environmental stress. On top of it all, we who are of a certain age group have been told we are not…
Mind the Gap
I recently had someone I trust report something political he had “read on the internet” that I was expected to find both stupid and outrageous. The anecdote played well into my biases and I found myself tempted to pile on to the anecdote,…
Story-listening
In which Coyote teaches me to listen to stories in the appropriate frame of mind. “Tell me a story,” I demanded. ‘Demanded’ might be too strong a word because I meant it as a compliment. Coyote tells such good stories and I love…
Country Funeral
“Have you ever seen a ghost,” my friend asked. We were having breakfast at Cafe Dewitt. I was on the banquette with my back to the fishtank. We were early so no one was seated nearby but that might have caught their attention.…
To Delve
I learned a counting rhyme when I was a child, “One, Two Buckle My Shoe.” I recited it, of course, but there wasn’t anything in the lower numbers to hold my interest—three, four shut the door; five, six, pick up sticks; seven, eight,…