In Walla Walla, the sidewalks are rolled up promptly at 8, even on the weekends, and even in the height of the tourist season. As one would imagine, this can be frustrating for the residents of the city, whose dining options are reduced to Shari’s and Wendy’s if it’s later than 9p.m. And often, neither of those seems remotely appetizing, no offense to the hard-working waitstaff at either business. Additionally, sometimes I just want a little piece of sweetness that isn’t in the form of straw-busting milkshake. No offense to the Frosty. Read More…
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Cupcakes across Seattle
Friday Flash No. 7: Mummy
My heart was on fire, or at least, it felt like it was on fire. I kept one hand over the middle of my chest to double check. A nurse noticed and came over to me.
“Inez, are you in pain again?”
I nodded. I still wasn’t any good at talking. Not on a consistent basis.
The nurse leaned in and squinted at the monitor behind me. “I can only give you one more increase,” she said, twisting something on my IV line. “The pain should start to subside soon.” She patted me gently on my shoulder and I resisted jerking away. I smiled at her in as small a fashion as possible, so I wouldn’t tear the corners of my mouth. Read More…
The land of inspiration
A good friend asked me this morning where I find my ideas, and the first image that popped into my head was an Easter egg hunt. On the heels of this sweet memory appeared a roundhouse punch, something delivered in a grimy tavern. And so I had my answer. Sometimes I find my ideas, and sometimes they find me. Read More…
From here to there
If the ocean signifies the breathing apparatus of Planet Earth, then the mountains are the memory of its earlier incarnations, seemingly frozen in time even as they move secretly in some new direction. I have an affection for sea water, since childhood play dates with sand, shovel, and pail. Growing up east of the Mississippi I thought that the Appalachians were as powerful as mountains ever aspired. They counted as wilderness, filled with things not commonly found in our suburban parcel. Read More…
Hot molten links for Tuesday
I’m on the road again today, so I’ve got no writing time, although I do have some posts coming up for tomorrow in various places. In the meantime:
- In the only good news I can remember reading from a major newspaper this year, Canada’s The Globe & Mail reports that world hunger is on the decline. Note that at nearly a billion people, it’s still way too high.
- How Colorado is a testing ground for abstinence-only education, over at RH Reality Check.
- With a number of special elections coming up in the Senate, TPM reminds us that some folks will be seated in November, not January. How this might affect us.
- Sarah Shourd is finally freed from Iranian prison. NPR (and everyone else) has an article.
- Really interesting piece on game shows and soaps in a post 9/11 world, over at Snarky’s Machine.
Enjoy the day, folks!
Diagramming Isn’t Just for Nuns Anymore
A joke I’ve told over the years is that I have a 1950s education because I went to Catholic school in the 70s and they were twenty years behind. But it remains true that I learned penmanship using the Palmer method and I was forced to diagram my sentences as a means of mastering grammar and syntax. I’m sure I would have learned the difference between a complex and a compound sentence without diagramming, but hey, I had the additional instruction in seeing how words make patterns, and looking back, I appreciate the sisters’ determination even if it meant a lot of embarrassment in front of a chalkboard.
Before everyone rolls their eyes and runs off lest I carry on about sentence diagramming, know that it isn’t the focus of this post. Yippee! Actually, I want to talk about flow diagrams for novel writing. Read More…
The writer’s comment filtration system
I haven’t spent quality time in a writing workshop in years, and I was disappointed to find that the LGBT writing group in Seattle doesn’t really have a workshop per se. After college and graduate school studying American literature I don’t really have any more pep for talking about books, especially if I have to pay $100 a month to do it.
I went online to find some critique groups and I came up with three: two for speculative fiction and one for long format work. After underestimating Emerald City traffic congestion, I turned around and came back home from my first foray, now much better educated about where exactly Bellingham is, and which is the best on ramp to I-5 from my house. I will always marvel at how places so close together can take so long to reach in something as technologically advanced as a car. Read More…
Conception
He handed the jar to me, a small glass container with a fluttery light inside it, some kind of hybrid between electricity, butterflies, and lightning bugs. The glass lid clattered a little as there was nothing sealing it to the jar itself.
For all of its importance Jayman pressed it into my hands without much care, not waiting to see if I had a firm grip on the thing before he headed back off toward his cubicle. I almost dropped it, and that would have been a disaster.
Persistence for Dummies
I went back to Whidbey Island yesterday to hear Corbin Lewars give a presentation: How to Persevere with Your Writing. One could argue that driving four hours round-trip was in and of itself “perseverance,” so why even drive out there? But then if one didn’t go, then they wouldn’t exactly be persevering and well, I think I just found a paradox. Or an alignment of truth. Whatever. I only passed that logic class in college because the TA took a shine to me, I’m sure, because there is no way that 50 points on each exam equals a C. Read More…
I’m a big boy now
A couple of weeks ago, Johanna Harness on her blog talked about literary rejection as not unlike the experience of learning to walk. We humans, we learn to stand, then take small steps while holding onto something sturdier than ourselves, and we fall down, a whole hell of a lot. Somehow when we’re toddlers, without all of this cumbersome self-reflection and analysis, we don’t really mind the hiccups that are part and parcel with the learning process. But sheesh, get a couple of “I’m just not the right agent” letters, decades later, and it can be an unraveling worse than seeing your favorite baby blanket in tatters.
Something happened in the meanwhile, Johanna posits, that changed how we feel regarding the negative side of the learning process. And it behooves people trying to write for a living to retain the totality of experiences related to getting work published. Read More…
Trans/plant/portation 