Archive for April 2011
The Put-Upon: From the Heart in the Heartland
Oh, Lordy, here I go again, a splinter under my skin that I just have to worry up to light and air. This time, it’s the term, “trailer trash,” that’s got me worked up. A name for those folks in economic dire straits with fewer and fewer chances to rise above their circumstances. A category…
Read MoreGet to Work: The Value of Jobs in Narratives
Yesterday in my fiction workshop, I was talking about the value of having something for the main characters of a story to do. I’ve always thought that jobs were useful in this regard. A character in a story can engage in all sorts of interesting activities on the basis of his or her job alone.…
Read MoreE-Readers and Public Library Books: A Tribe of Readers
An article in this morning’s Columbus Dispatch regarding e-readers and the downloading of library books has me thinking about how we’ve been quick to exchange an aesthetic experience for convenience. I already have nostalgia for the now defunct card catalog in libraries. How close are we to only having virtual libraries and no printed materials…
Read MoreMake Room, Make Room!: Landscape, Character, the Writer’s Heart
Last Thursday, I did a reading at Indiana University-East in Richmond, Indiana. The reading was in the library on campus, and the podium was in front of a wall of glass that looked out onto a grassy area at the edge of woodlands. Just as my excellent host, TJ Rivard, called me to the podium,…
Read MoreWrite a True Thing: Let the Zing Knock You Slobberjawed
Did you hear about the toddler who was served alcohol at an Applebees restaurant in Michigan? Apparently, some left-over mixed cocktails ended up in the apple juice. Now there’s a zing for your tyke to put a little extra giddyup in his roll! How interesting that when I first typed the last sentence above, I…
Read More“Live Forever!”: Ray Bradbury and What It Takes to Make a Story
Sometime this past autumn Mort Castle, a writer near Chicago, asked me if I’d consider contributing a story to an anthology that he and co-editor, Sam Weller, were putting together. The anthology, Live Forever!, was to be a tribute to Ray Bradbury. I just learned yesterday that the anthology sold at auction last week to…
Read MoreWestern Carolina Literary Festival and Thoughts on Teachers and Novel Revision
I just got back from the Western Carolina Literary Festival at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, from where I’d hoped to do a new post, but, gosh-darn it, the lit fest was just too hoppin’ of a place. So now, back on flat land, I write to report on the festival, the climate…
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