I’ve mentioned before that I attended a diversity program called “Women Supporting Women” in late September 2005. When I declared to the other participants in that program, “I will write a book before I die,” one of the women in the group handed me a Post-It note. On that Post-It, […]
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Memories: A Creative Blend of Fact and Fiction
Many of the posts on this blog are about my memories. My theme, after all, is “one writer’s journey through life and time.” And what is our journey, if not a collection of memories? Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “The Value of a Flawed Memory,” […]
Continue readingReal Life Does Not Make Good Narrative
I’ve been reading Janet Burroway’s book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. I started it a few months back, and every so often I dip into it again. I’m not reading it linearly. I started with the chapters on character, then moved to theme and setting, and last week […]
Continue readingWhat Is Story (Redux)? . . . And a Sense of Urgency
My first post on this blog went live in January 2012, but I didn’t start a regular posting schedule until March of that year, so I consider March my blog’s anniversary. This blog is now three years old. I deliberately set the blog’s theme “Story and History” to be broad […]
Continue readingFrom the Perspective of a Point of View Nazi
In my critique group, I’m known as the point of view Nazi. I am usually the one to notice when a writer has crept from one character’s point of view to another’s in the same scene. And I usually push my writing partners to go deeper into their protagonist’s point […]
Continue readingHaunting Book: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
I’ve posted about other haunting books set during wartime (see here and here). The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is as haunting as any of those featured in my earlier reviews. A writer friend of mine gushed one day, “You’ve got to read The Book Thief. It’s so wonderful. And […]
Continue readingMusings On My 250th Post
WordPress keeps excellent statistics for bloggers, and so I realized recently that today’s post would be my 250th post. This milestone seemed worthy of comment. I’ve been blogging for about two-and-a-half years, for most of that time twice per week. I’ve written before about lessons I’ve learned blogging, and I […]
Continue reading30 Gold Nuggets from a Writing Conference
I spent this past weekend (May 1-3) at the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation, Inc., conference in Oklahoma City. This was my fourth trip to this conference, and each time it has been worthwhile. What I learned at OWFI 2014 is probably different from what others experienced, because we all attended different […]
Continue readingFact and Fiction: A “First Hand” Description of San Francisco in April 1848
Henry Vizetelly, an English publisher who was in San Francisco at the time of the 1848 gold discovery, wrote a novel entitled Four Months Among the Gold-Finders in Alta California: Being the Diary of an Expedition from San Francisco to the Gold Districts. He used the pseudonym J. Tyrwhitt Brooks. […]
Continue readingWallace Stegner: On the Teaching of Creative Writing
When I first began writing, I read lots of books on writing—many on the techniques of writing fiction, some on the writing life, and a few on grammar. But I didn’t read anything on teaching creative writing; that was too far beyond my ken. In the past seven years, I […]
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