Posts by Lee Martin
To the Basement: New Place, New Perspective
Last week, Cathy and I had the interior walls of our house painted and new carpet put down. For me, it was a very stressful week. Not only did we have to box up all my books and any breakables we also had to take down all our wall hangings and find a place to…
Read MoreTips for Novelists
I’m starting to write a new novel, or should I say, what I hope will be a new novel. I’ve published eight of them, but it’s still scary to announce that I’m attempting another. Tip #1: It’s okay to be scared. It’s also okay to be excited about the work ahead of you. I won’t…
Read MoreSmile
After Cathy and I moved into our home almost nine years ago, I couldn’t find my junior high school yearbooks. I’d saved them since the late 1960s, and suddenly they were gone. I’d thought of them often after they’d disappeared, puzzled over where they might be. I assumed they must have been lost in the…
Read MoreAn Old Post for the New Year
Cathy and I spent New Year’s Eve and most of New Year’s Day in the hospital because I was having an episode of atrial fibrillation. I’m fine now, but instead of writing something new this week, I’ve decided to repost this slightly revised entry from six years ago: New Year, New Writing: Tips for…
Read MoreThe Lonely Voice
It’s one of many Saturday nights in 1970 when I’m fifteen years old. I live in the very small town of Sumner, Illinois, with a population of around a thousand. We have no teen center. I don’t belong to a church that sponsors youth activities, and the Friday night sock hop after the basketball game…
Read MoreNarratives from the Unexpected
Author Marjorie Holmes once said, “At Christmas, all roads lead home.” And so it was that last week Cathy and I set out to spend a week in our native southeastern Illinois, albeit not without a bit of last-minute drama. The night before we were to leave, I heard a loud noise, the kind of…
Read MoreSnow Was General: Writing Beautiful Sentences
Last night, snow was general all over central Ohio. If you’re a James Joyce fan, you’ll hear the echo of this sentence to the end of Joyce’s story, “The Dead.” Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless…
Read MoreCuriosity and the Fiction Writer: Ten Questions
Last night at a gathering of folks from my MFA workshops, the talk turned to dating and the attempt to find a romantic connection. I listened to those who are using dating apps talk about how horrible it is to try to find a potential partner that way. I’ve known success stories from the…
Read MoreGet At the Marrow: Tension in Dialogue
As I’ve aged, I’ve gotten thin-skinned. I mean that literally. As a result of my stroke in 2012 and subsequent episodes of atrial fibrillation, I take an adult-strength aspirin every day to keep blood clots from forming. Now, when I bump or scrape an arm or a leg, I’m more prone to bruise, developing ugly…
Read MoreBerryville, Illinois: I was Listening to Your Lessons on Love
When I was a child, my Thanksgivings were always spent with my mother’s side of my family. We gathered at my grandmother’s house in the crossroads village of Berryville, Illinois, catty-corner from the general store that my grandparents had run once upon a time. My grandmother’s house is now gone as is the store and…
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