Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
When the tide recedes, great shards of frozen fjord shatter against the shore. The ocean leaves them there as it pulls back from the land, and they pile up in a jagged ruin that stretches all around the bay at Flekkefjord. When the sun is blazing and the tide is moving at its fastest, you... Continue Reading →
This post is part of the monthly Author Toolbox Blog Hop. Check out other Hop participants' posts to learn about more aspects of writing craft and business, the third Wednesday of each month except for November and December. If we are writers who care about social justice, we have to interrogate our work. How do... Continue Reading →
This last week I participated in an online short story course. One Story's Write a Short Story with Hannah Tinti was an engaging, entertaining, but most of all practically useful one-week course, though which we explored a basic structure for short story writing. This was the first class I've done with One Story, and I... Continue Reading →
In the five years I've lived now here on the west coast of Norway, my inner relationship to this place has changed and grown. When I came, it was a feeling of complete awe that flooded me, as if this were a fairytale place. The natural beauty proclaims itself here. Dramatic shapes of the land,... Continue Reading →
On Friday, we said goodbyes to our graduating second-year students. In this international community, where these young people gather for two years in a crucible of five-students-to-a-room mayhem, of intense exams capping a rigorous curriculum, of a plethora of student-organized events, of all the pangs of teenage life, the parting is hard. They have come... Continue Reading →
As I continue to explore different venues for submitting short stories, one publication different than the others has been Sixfold. Traditional literary journals have a team of readers and editors who vet submissions and curate the publication. Sixfold, instead, has the writers who have submitted stories or poems read, comment, and vote on one another's... Continue Reading →
We have had a brilliant week of weather, with sunny days and clear nights, temperatures just approaching where you can be out in the day without a jacket. We hear it will grow cold again next week, so we've been trying to be outside when we can. Evening at low tide. My motivation for writing... Continue Reading →
I'm only up for a short post today. I've had a lot of evening events during the last week. I'm behind on grading papers. I'm squeezing out some time to keep up with my writing, but only a bit. We're trying to figure out summer plans. Things keep rushing on and keeping up's a challenge.... Continue Reading →
Many times I have heard writers talk about a character seeming to lift up off the page, feel real enough that they start telling their own story. Writers say, "The story writes itself. The character told me what they'd do." If I'm honest, most times when I hear these things I roll my eyes. I... Continue Reading →
Over these last couple of years, I have learned the power of goal setting to push my writing forward. In 2021, I set goals for monthly word count, submissions, and publications, and as I could have foreseen, met only the two goals I had meaningful control over. That was a good lesson learned. In 2022,... Continue Reading →
As part of my research for the novel I'm working on, which focuses on ceramics, I've been taking some of my writing time to explore what I can of an important figure in the craft, one who was a "great grandfather" to me in terms of my ceramics education (that is, a teacher of my... Continue Reading →
I'm writing this short post on Thursday night. When it comes Sunday, I'll be away with students skiing. Down here near the fjord, winter cannot hold. It snows and rains, hail and slush and sleet. We will retreat into the mountains where it's cold and clear, the snow so deep, if memories of the last... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 