Today, I start with a memory of my mother in the kitchen on Sundays. She has prepared as much of our noon meal as possible before church, but she still has work to do. This is her day of rest, a day she doesn’t work in the laundry or the kitchen at the nursing home,…

I’m on leave and not teaching this semester, but in many ways it seems that I am, and that’s okay. Teaching is something I love. Sometimes I love it as much as writing. Sometimes I love it less. Sometimes I put on my crabby pants and grumble about all the time that being a teacher…

I’ve always thought that writing memoir, in some ways, is easier than writing fiction because the plot is already in place. We know the major players. We know what they did or didn’t do. We know the narrative arc of a certain slice of experience. We don’t have to make anything up. But, of course,…

I’m watching a swan as it glides across the lake. The sun is out. The temperature is moderate. For February, in the Midwest, it’s not a bad day at all. I’m thinking about how our writing lives can sometimes be like this—effortless, beautiful—and how most of the time they aren’t. For the most part, I…

I drove across Indiana today in heavy snow. Visibility was poor on I-70 between Indianapolis and Terre Haute. Traffic was slow. I saw cars off the road and a multiple vehicle accident. I kept going. I found the track and I stayed in it. Hmmm. . .sort of like writing a novel. The first novel…

My cousin invited me to look through some old family photos she’d inherited from her grandmother, who was my aunt. It was a wonderful evening, but the true gift of it appeared at the end of the many photos we saw. I found myself picking up a portrait, roughly 8” x 10”, of a family,…

And so it came to be that I wrote a novel, and my very nice agent found a very nice editor who liked the book. He made some very smart editorial suggestions, and I took nearly every one of them as I prepared the final manuscript. Then a very nice copy editor had fun marking…

I’m posting this entry earlier than usual this week because tomorrow I’ll be flying to Denver to be at the American Booksellers’ Association’s Winter Institute to promote my new novel that’s coming out this May. This is a post about a little boy, who was shy and sensitive, but also very curious. The boy that…

I’ve reached the age, sixty, when I sometimes meet people I knew a long time ago in my youth, and I can see the boys or girls they once were before time had their way with them.  I know the same holds true for me. Somewhere inside this “mature” body is the boy who once…

I just visited the fine folks of Eastern Kentucky University’s low-residency MFA program, The Bluegrass Writers Studio, and was reminded once again of all the warm and wonderful people who are part of this extended family we sometimes call our community of writers. I love seeing old friends and making new ones. Each time I…