Posts by Lee Martin
Rituals and Narratives
Cathy and I went to the apple orchard yesterday. It’s our custom this time of year. We don’t pick our own anymore, but we always buy a peck of Honeycrisp and a half-dozen pumpkin donuts. We eat a donut in our car, and then we drive home. We fill a bowl with apples and leave…
Read MoreDon’t Think before You Speak
This past week was a busy one: MFA orientation, meetings with my thesis advisees, two classes taught, annual physical exam, another chemo treatment for Cathy. This time, we were to arrive at 2:15, so we didn’t pack our usual breakfast/brunch food. Instead, we had snacks provided by the treatment center: pretzels and animal crackers. I…
Read MoreAt the Start of a New School Year
The Autumn Semester begins this week at Ohio State University where I’ll be returning from sabbatical and a summer unlike any other in my life. As many of you know, my wife Cathy was diagnosed with breast cancer and is still going through chemotherapy. She’s gone through the roughest part of her treatment and is…
Read MoreThis and That: A CNF Writing Activity
So far, so good when it comes to Cathy’s cancer treatment. She started her second round of chemo on Friday, and all went well. One down, eleven to go. She woke up Saturday morning and said it was the best she’d felt in two months. We did some shopping and then drove out to Bambi’s,…
Read MoreThoughts about Drafting and Revising a Novel
For those of you who are following the story of Cathy’s cancer treatment, I’m happy to report she’s feeling much better after getting out of the hospital last Sunday. She starts her second round of chemo (twelve weekly infusions) this Friday. We’ve heard this drug is less harsh than the ones from the first round,…
Read MoreHistory Creates Narrative
Cathy’s health had a hiccup this past week. She had some nausea and abdominal pain. We thought it was the chemo catching up with her, but it turned out to be a case of diverticulitis. She spent four days in the hospital, getting IV antibiotics. Everyone here, especially Stanley the Cat, is glad to have…
Read MoreThe Art of Misdirection
At times, my wife Cathy gets sad because she thinks her cancer treatments are putting an unfair burden on me. I tell her she’d do the same thing for me, and she agrees, but still she cries sometimes, particularly in the days following a chemotherapy infusion when she has little energy and her blood pressure…
Read MoreDon’t Sweat the Small Stuff
When the person you love most in the world is diagnosed with cancer, life as you knew it changes forever. I won’t speak for everyone, but such has been the case for me. Specifically, an odd thing has happened with time. In some ways, now that Cathy is undergoing chemotherapy, time has often slowed down.…
Read MoreStorytelling: A Few Lessons from Life to the Page
I’m snoozing for ten minutes before my alarm is set to go off when I hear my wife fall. Lesson 1: A story begins with an inciting incident. Said incident is the beginning of a chain of events, none of which can happen without something to put the narrative into motion. So I begin with…
Read MoreWhere Are You?: Questions for Storytellers
When I was a boy in the little town of Sumner, Illinois, many families had backyard vegetable gardens. I’m talking about the sixties and seventies, times that weren’t too distant from the Great Depression and World War II, those times of subsistence and victory gardens. My own father was sixteen when the stock market crashed…
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