Posts by Lee Martin
To Cherish the World: A Christmas Wish
I was back in my native southeastern Illinois last week, and I happened to have a little dust-up with a stranger at the local fitness center. Let’s say we should have agreed to disagree and left it at that, but we didn’t. She, a very nice elderly lady, broached a subject she shouldn’t have brought…
Read MoreAre You Writing What Matters?
My father used to tell me, when I was a small boy who liked to think he knew a thing or two about a thing or two, “You’re just talking to hear yourself roar.” Or sometimes he’d use a variation, “You’re just talking to hear your head rattle.” I’m remembering these sayings here at the…
Read MoreStory Starters: Some Prompts
Often ideas for stories can come from things we overhear people say, things that make us curious. For example, I once heard a woman say, “I’m just a drunk girl in stilettos.” Okay, I confess the woman who said it would one day be my wife. The actual facts of the story don’t matter, What…
Read MoreBlack Friday: What If?
Cathy and I were in Home Depot on Black Friday, looking at items for our front porch Christmas display, when an elderly woman with an empty shopping cart said to me, “I used to play Santa Claus.” It was a dreary night, cold and damp, but there in Home Depot surrounded by the artificial trees…
Read MoreTrouble Resonates: How to Use It in Fiction
Please don’t tell the folks who sign my checks at The Ohio State University, but my wife Cathy has always been a fan of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team. She’s always wanted to see them in person rather than on television, and today, thanks to a game here at OSU, this was the…
Read MoreAugust, 1974
I was eighteen years old the summer Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. I was between my freshman and sophomore years of college, and I worked as a sales clerk at Sherman’s Department Store in Olney, Illinois. Each afternoon around three o’clock, my manager sent me to the drug store across the street to buy him…
Read MoreUrgent Motivation: Putting Your Characters into Motion
Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, Olive, Again, begins like this: In the early afternoon on a Saturday in June, Jack Kennison put on his sunglasses, got into his sports car with the top down, strapped the seatbelt over his shoulder and across his large stomach, and drove to Portland—almost an hour away—to buy a gallon of…
Read MoreOne Fine Morning: Rededicating Ourselves to the Craft
I hope by now you’ve turned back your clocks an hour and enjoyed your extra sleep. Here in central Ohio, it’s a beautiful sunny day—a little on the cool side, but, hey, it’s November. Let’s enjoy the sun and not think about the fact that it’ll set at 5:27 pm. Yes, we’re making our final…
Read MoreLeaps, Associations, and Connections
It starts, as so many stories do, with a bottle of bourbon. The brand is Angels Envy, and our friend Deni says it should be the title of a poem. We know, by the end of the night, our other friend Roy will write it. For the time, though, as we sit around a table…
Read MoreGiving a Memoir Resonance
Facts alone do not a memoir make. First this happened, then this happened, then this happened. A sequence of memories is easy enough for anyone to recall from a particular period of time in his or her life. It may even be easy to see the causal links between the events on a timeline. Because…
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