Posts by Lee Martin
The Land of If-Only’s: A Writing Activity for Memoirists
I’ve often reported a saying of my father’s: “If if’s and but’s were candies and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.” For a man who didn’t read any book but the Bible, he had a way with language. His saying takes me into the land of if-only’s, and I start to think about how…
Read MoreFragmenting the Memoir: A Writing Activity
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about memoirs that don’t tell their stories in traditional narratives. Maybe they shake up chronology. Maybe they fragment it. Maybe they let it spin off into patterns of association. For the sake of convenience, I’ll call these lyric memoirs, though I suppose we could just as easily call…
Read MoreHow to Write about Happy Moments in Memoirs
I just came back from a weekend in my native southeastern Illinois where it’s harvest season. Combines are cutting soybeans and picking corn. Sixty years ago, my father made the mistake of trying to clear a clogged shucking box without first shutting down the power take-off. The spinning rollers in the shucking box pulled in…
Read MoreSo You Want to Be a Writer: Ten Tips for Handling Disappointment
So You Want to Be a Writer: Ten Tips for Handling Disappointment I remember a time when I was frustrated with the whole writing game because it was just too darned hard, and I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted when it came to publication. Now was that thirty years ago, or last week? My…
Read MoreLooking Back on the Follies of Youth
I spent Sunday afternoon at an all-class reunion for my high school in Sumner, Illinois. Our town was a small town; our school was a small school, the sort where everyone knew everyone else and where your embarrassing and criminal moments stood out and became the stuff of stories to be told for years and…
Read MoreGoofus and Gallant Write Their Memoirs
If you’re like me, you remember very well the magazine, Highlights for Children, and one of its regular features, “Goofus and Gallant.” Six panels of drawings compared the comportment of the two boys: the always ill-behaved, Goofus, and the ever. . .well, the ever-gallant, Gallant.” The first panel on the left might say, “When Goofus…
Read MoreWriting about Writing: I Never Meant to Have a Blog
To begin, a confession: I never wanted to write a blog. A few years ago, when I was getting my first web site, my designer, who specializes in authors’ web pages, said, “You’ll need to do a blog.” I told him I didn’t want to do a blog. He said, “But you have to. That’s…
Read MoreHow to Know When to Be Quick: Writing Flash CNF
I just finished teaching an online workshop in flash creative nonfiction for the fine folks at Word Tango. I loved this group of writers who were fearlessly vulnerable as they captured those illuminating moments that surprise us at the end of a good piece of flash. One question that arose was how to know when…
Read MorePerseverance and the Value of Work
On the last day of my father’s life, he mowed his yard. It was the hottest day of the year, and he mowed because that grass needed cutting and he wasn’t about to leave it undone. His heart seized with the effort, and my mother saw him, collapsed on the grass, already dead. She’d tried…
Read MoreFollowing a Dramatic Moment to Its End
For some reason—maybe because I feel us edging closer to autumn—I’m remembering how, when I was a small boy, I’d walk with my mother into the woods on our farm, and together we’d gather hickory nuts. For those of you who don’t know, a hickory nut is encased in a thick black husk. You can…
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