writing
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David Copperfield: Contrast of Summer and Winter
Paragraphs can be so telling. Here, I’m going to compare two passages from David Copperfield that made their way into my reading journal because of their devastating depth. Here is the first: When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers…
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David Copperfield: Intro
The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery. This is the original title of Charles Dickens’ eighth novel, published in serial form in the year 1850. Now sold as a 700-page book, it was originally released in 19 monthly one-shilling installments. This makes for a delightfully long story…
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On Dusty Bookshelves
Last year in August, I started a reading journal. It is literally a list of books I read and when I finish them. As the list started to grow over passing weeks, I realized that when I pay attention–real attention–to what a book is saying, there is a lot between the lines that a skim…
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12/22/2017
i believe in honesty – x is x and y is y – like frost on snowy days, and also in the off-key notes that every artist plays, half-developed photographs, barely thought out rhymes, and in the bizarre colors that you see when you take time.
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New Plans for The Autumn Prince
This year has not been my greatest writing-wise. I finished one draft of a novel I’m happy with; everything else turned out to be a mess. Perhaps 2017 has been too emotionally loaded for me to connect with characters. Maybe it’s more optimistic: it could be that I’ve improved so much, I can’t be happy…
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Adventures in French
They say to pay attention to what interests you most, because it is part of you. In the past, if asked what my passion was in life, I would likely have responded, “Writing.” I would have said without hesitation that I lived for story, nothing more and nothing less, but as we grow, we learn.…
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In the Pages of a Dream Journal
Where do you go when you fall asleep? Have you ever wanted to know more about your dream land? We writers encounter plot bunnies in bizarre things while awake. We find something that catches our interest and store it away for later, usually forgetting it–there’s no way for us to write all of our ideas.…
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Is it Writer’s Block?
Recently I asked myself why I never update my blog, even though I have so many ideas. Writer’s Block is portrayed as blankness; it’s the absence of a muse, staring at a notebook without hearing her sweet whisper. We claim the Block as a reason why we have nothing to say. I wondered, Do I…
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A Writer is Never Finished
One is never truly finished writing a story. I’m not an expert on technique; my attention span does not allow me to study complicated books on style. My muse shies from the idea of outlining, flash cards don’t help me at all, and I follow the 7-point method very loosely. The one thing I know…
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The Forest of Heldbreath
Imagine your mind is a forest. The edge of the forest is a place where you pause and get distracted–a place of heldbreath, of course. Sometimes we wait at the edge of heldbreath for days, months, or years. I’ve been lurking there for several weeks, skillfully talking myself out of a very important task. Should…
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The Autumn Prince Returns
In October of 2015, I released a serial on my blog called The Autumn Prince. It became more popular than I had anticipated; one reader called it the “highlight of her month,” and I am still humbled by that. The following year it was adapted into a short story for the Crows on Heartstrings anthology,…
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Of Ghosts and Old Doorbells
The old doorbell had been silent for over twenty years. After this house was abandoned, people eventually stopped coming to visit, or even to try and sell things. It had been so long, in fact, that the ghosts started to assume it was too rusty to ever make another sound. Three generations of ghosts dwelled…
Mariella Hunt & the Tearoom 