Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
On Thursday morning, at the patisserie Poppella, I wrote this in my journal: I'm so overwhelmed by Naples. It's so busy. I feel like I'll be trampled when I walk on the street. Everything is dirty. Garbage is all over the streets. I'm afraid to take out my computer. I'm afraid someone will take it.... Continue Reading →
It's 10:30pm, and I'm just sitting down to write. I'll have to keep it a quick one. A long and sweaty, beautiful and adventurous day of travel now at an end, I'll recount a bit and reflect, see if I can tease out a few details to remember. Naples has a reputation. I think everyone... Continue Reading →
First, third, omniscient, limited—point of view (POV) is a global decision we make in every writing project. Like our choice of present or past tense, selecting the right point of view for a story has a powerful impact on the final effect, and it’s worth considering different options before jumping to one choice. Many of... Continue Reading →
In the eastern parts of Umbria, the land lofts up from fertile valleys into rich-forested mountains. These are the Apennines, a range I'd heard mentioned before but knew nothing of, a string of low mountains stretching the full length of the Italian peninsula. Yesterday, on a recommendation from our Italian language teacher, we drove out... Continue Reading →
My husband's and my goal for this summer was to settle: to root ourselves in a place for a length of time, to get to know it well, to accustom ourselves to some new surroundings, to avoid the pellmell back and forth of place-to-place travel, to focus, to breathe, to find some deeper sense of... Continue Reading →
Not a writing-related post today, at least not explicitly. I'm departing tomorrow for summer travels. We'll be in Italy, and my plan is to make a large amount of time while we're there for writing. Best wishes to you, with love,Jimmy Bird tracks, April 13, 2013 In November of 2016, my computer crashed. Just a... Continue Reading →
I've been working on a short story recently. Unlike most of what I've been writing the last few years, it's solid realism. I didn't expect this to make it a particular challenge for me, but as I have been slogging my way through outlines, a first draft of one-and-a-quarter scenes, doubt has besieged me of... Continue Reading →
The other night, I finished reading Ariel Dorfman's play Death and the Maiden, a haunting examination of Chile's reckoning with the aftermath of dictatorship. The play itself was emotionally powerful, concentrated in its characters and ideas (somewhat in the way poetry has a density of meaning, like the brief but all-consuming burst from a candy... Continue Reading →
In between novel revisions this winter and spring, I've been working on a few short stories. The more compressed, quicker course of developing and honing these has helped me think about the process and purpose of telling stories, and today I'll share some of what I am learning. Likewise, I would love to hear your... Continue Reading →
