To My Wife on Valentine’s Day
This is what I remember. It’s 1974, and we’re sitting in my Plymouth Duster in your driveway at the end of our date. I’ve got the Rolling Stones playing on my tape deck. It’s still early spring, and the night air is cool. Our breath is causing my car windows to fog up with condensation.…
Read MoreCollage Approach for Narrative
The short story, “Escapes,” by Joy Williams opens with what at first glance may seem to be a series of disconnected oddities: the narrator’s memory of her father telling her about her grandfather being alive just before he died, her memory of a twenty-foot tall champagne glass atop a nightclub, her father pretending to be…
Read MoreQuestions That Lead to Action: A Story Starter
Due to the recent COVID surge, Cathy and I have been limiting our exposure by avoiding public places as much as possible. This past week, we went to a bookstore event where everyone was fully vaccinated and boosted and wore masks. It felt odd, but also nice, to be among people again. For those of…
Read MoreReleasing Yourself from the “I” in Memoir
It’s a snowy day here in central Ohio which has me thinking about the intricacies of the flakes. We all know that no two are alike, and so it is for the experiences we present in a memoir. Each moment has various aspects, angles, and patterns. Our hearts and minds convince us we’ve accurately recalled,…
Read MoreFamily Rituals and Flash Fiction
Here we are in the post-holiday time, and I’m thinking about family rituals. My father’s side of the family had a habit of gathering on New Year’s Eve for an oyster soup supper followed by a rousing game of cards—Rook usually or sometimes Pitch, both of them bidding games. The competition could get fierce, and…
Read MoreBeyond the Pain: A Writing Exercise
I’ve been teaching in the low-residency MFA program at Miami University here in Ohio the past few days, and one day I led a writing activity for people in our prose workshop. Both fiction and nonfiction writers went through the following steps to great success. They found genuine, strong voices while also developing a deeper…
Read MoreThe Joy of Work in the New Year
Cathy and I didn’t waste any time saying goodbye to Christmas. We took down the tree and all the decorations and stored everything neatly in our basement before New Year’s Eve. We rearranged the furniture in our living room and did a top to bottom house cleaning. We’ve made it through the holidays, and here…
Read MoreThe Beauty of the Design: Some Thoughts at the End of the Year
Yesterday at our Christmas lunch, the conversation turned to movies we’d recently seen. I mentioned that Cathy and I had watched The Power of the Dog. “Was it grim?” one of our lunch companions asked, and I told her, yes, it was grim, but it was also beautiful. “Did it make you feel grim when…
Read MoreMaking Room for Contradictions
The car, a luxury sports model, sat on the overgrown grass in front of a ramshackle house in my wife Cathy’s hometown. Ordinarily, I’d identify the specific make and model, but I want to protect the privacy of the owner. I couldn’t help but notice the car as I ran by because it was so…
Read MoreI’m Mr. Blue: Thoughts on Writing Essays
It’s Christmas night, and I’m in the backseat of my parents’ Chevrolet Belair or the Ford that preceded it, or else riding between them in the cab of my father’s Chevy pickup, and I’m four, or five, or six, or seven, and we’re coming home from another Christmas spent with my mother’s side of the…
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