-
Keeping the Peace
When you “finish” writing a book (I can’t even think “finish” without feeling my lips pucker to form quotes), it seems some people expect revelry, and there is a lovely sense of feeling one shoulder’s fall to more normal levels. Much has been put aside while working on last chapters that needs tending. Days quickly get filled, and it won’t be long ( Read more... ) -
The Poetry Friday Anthology
The Poetry Friday Anthology was the dream child of Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, who have compiled other great collections. In their introduction, they advocate reading poetry first and foremost for pleasure, but also point out ways that reading poetry fulfills the Common Core standards for kindergarten through grade 5. Each poem is accompanied by ( Read more... ) -
The Silence In Between
I spent part of this morning moving some books from piles to shelves, while some were bagged for the next library book sale. But the aloe is still leaning over under the weight of its thick, prickly self, waiting to be repotted. The garden is still waiting for me to appear with clippers and rake. I won’t mention housework. After finishing my novel ( Read more... ) -
Finished!
Finishing is a good verb, even if it’s imprecise. It can scoop in a lot of time, and usually implies a circle, though one hopes they get quicker with each round. Maybe you can guess from my plans for the next few weeks what I finished?
Get a new toothbrush. Bake. (Apple cake or pumpkin chocolate chip cake?) Hang out with my husband. Clean the house ( Read more... ) -
How Personal Should a Fiction Writer Get?
The first day of the writing course I teach at Simmons at the Carle, it seemed clear that most students would need little coaxing to reveal their heartfelt concerns. But in the writing journals submitted to me, some confided that they found personal writing hard. Someone (not a student) asked why I chose to begin with memoirs, taking a look at ( Read more... ) -
My Day with Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott
This week I went to the Concord Museum to see some of the photographs Annie Liebovitz took for her new book, Pilgrimage, which is a record of some of her inspirations, a looking back and inward, perhaps more reflective than the portraits of rock stars or other extravagantly dressed people she’s put on the pages of Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, or ( Read more... ) -
En Plein Air
My friend Ellen Farley, who teaches high school art and runs The Art Studio, recently made time to enter a plein air competition at Nash Gallery in Easthampton. The rules went something like this: the scene had to be painted outside within the city borders, and paper or canvas had to be stamped at the gallery five days before the showing, so no one ( Read more... ) -
The Middle of an Ending
There were about twenty minutes last week when I thought I’d finished writing my novel. I knew I’d go back to edit, but I felt the thrill of finishing for at least the length of time it takes to down a late summer beer. It was long enough to wonder why people cheer for you when you finish writing - not to suggest they shouldn’t, but when you really ( Read more... ) -
The Inner House: The Life of Edith Wharton
Yesterday was one of those warm but not steamy days that led Edith Wharton to spend summers in a home she called the Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts. My friend Ann, a first grade teacher, took a break from looking for caterpillars and putting up monarch displays to go with me to see a play called The Inner House. The Wharton Salon one woman play was ( Read more... ) -
Irene Latham!
One of the gifts of summer is when people travel into my small western Massachusetts orbit. I’ve felt a kindred spirit with Irene Latham after reading her blog, her beautiful novel, Leaving Gee’s Bend, and her collection of poems, The Color of Lost Rooms. I was happy she let me know that she’d be flying out of Alabama to visit the nearby Emily ( Read more... )