(Photo by Steve Rawley) I’m reading the Markus Zusak novel, “The Book Thief.” For awhile now, I was convinced that “The Man Who Loved Books Too Much” and “The Book Thief” were the same exact book. They’re not. One is non-fiction, about a guy who swipes books. The other is fiction (written for a Young …
(Photo by Steve Rawley) A Hope Carol by Christina Rossetti A night was near, a day was near, Between a day and night I heard sweet voices calling clear, Calling me: I heard a whirr of wing on wing, But could not see the sight; I long to see my birds that sing, I long …
(Photo by Steve Rawley) “Anything I’ve ever accomplished as a writer, as somebody doing TV, anything I’ve ever done in life, down to, like, cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was going to show people that they were fucked up, wrong, and that I was the fucking center of the universe and …
(Photo by Steve Rawley) Don’t feel like writing. I’m back to teaching (although I’m on winter break right now) and when I’m teaching, I’m just not into writing. When I’m writing, I’m not into teaching. So there you have it. Journals, always. Blogs, occasionally. Facebook? Too much. What’s up in your world? – nancy
(Photo by Steve Rawley) “Ambition is frozen desire, the current of a vocational life immobilized and over concretized to set, unforgiving goals. Ambition abstracts us from the underlying elemental nature of the creative conversation while providing us the cover of a target that has become false through over description, over familiarity or too much easy …
Did you notice how Josh Turner flips upside down briefly in that clip? Not all of us are gifted at production, just sayin’. More on that later. So. Writing. Writing is not that tough, if you know how to do it. Which I don’t, really, but that’s not the point. Writer’s block? Yeah, I’ve heard …
It was chilly last week. The mornings and late evenings are getting cooler; it’s getting dark earlier. I don’t need to water the yard or the garden as much — the tomatoes and melons are ripening and the flowers and herbs are established and holding their own. I wanted to warm up and couldn’t find …
Great essay in Salon by author and teacher Patrick Somerville. (Spoilers! Spoilers! Beware.) It’s tremendous, really, this essay, and I loved this graf: “In the end nothing matters but the work. You can’t control how it’s taken, and the act of telling a story always involves a gap. Sometimes confusion is the risk of ambiguity …
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” — Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012 from his website: “Throughout his life, Bradbury liked to recount the story of meeting a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, in 1932. At the end of his performance Electrico reached out to the twelve-year-old Bradbury, touched the boy with his sword, …
Jean Craighead George… Maurice Sendak… and… Carlos Fuentes… Whenever my students and I were having a wild day, all we had to do was read “Where the Wild Things Are” and we pow! We calmed down right down. Big kids, little kids, the teachers and I… It was like magic. Someone gifted me little “Where …