The Writer’s Garden
Today, Cathy and I put our garden down for the winter. We harvested our turnips, picked the last of the lettuce, and told our plot we hoped to see it in the spring. It was a good year for the garden. From spring lettuce and radishes, to bush beans and tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers,…
Read MoreThe Body Writes a Narrative
My wife Cathy has a sore throat. She’s tested negative for COVID, so more than likely she’s just got a little bug that will run its course. Of course, I’m worried that little bug will hop on over to me. The possibility of this happening has me thinking about my own history of maladies. When…
Read MoreSmall Facts
On Friday, my wife Cathy retired after forty-seven years as a healthcare professional, and on Saturday we celebrated with a gathering of friends. It’s a bittersweet time for Cathy. As ready as she is to move on to a new chapter of her life, she’ll admit to a touch of sadness over leaving her work…
Read MoreBegin with the Details: Writing Memoir
Down a lane off County Line Road in Lukin Township, Lawrence County, Illinois, a pile of rubble, which used to be the farmhouse where I lived with my parents, lies surrounded by briars and weeds. Some years back, one of the giant maple trees I remember from my childhood fell on the house, and it…
Read MoreGet Yourself Unstuck
Has this ever happened to you? You’re in the midst of a piece of writing, and you’re trying to maintain your momentum by working on it each day. Then the day comes when you realize you’re stuck. You can’t go on. You sit and stare out the window. You check your email. You get up…
Read MoreStory Starters
Stories begin amid instability. The main character’s world is rocked by something that changes the regular order of things. Sometimes, it’s a character’s own actions that cause the instability; other times, it’s the actions of others that require an action on the part of the main character. Here, then, are some situations that should help…
Read MoreSetting and Atmosphere
Out here in the small towns of southeastern Illinois—these Podunk farming towns where we’re eager to burst out of our teenage years and into our adult lives—the nights belong to the young. It’s 1974, and I’m eighteen. We’re on the cusp of spring—that awkward time in early March in the Midwest when it can be…
Read MoreIt Is What It Is: Writing Memoir from the Voices of Our Pasts
My father had a penchant for colorful sayings. “Can’t never did nothing,” he often told me when I complained I couldn’t perform a task. “You’re breeding a scab on your ass,” he said when I misbehaved. “You’re just talking to hear yourself roar,” he said when I got too chatty. And, of course, when I…
Read MoreDark Corners: A Writing Prompt
My wife Cathy and I went to the apple orchard yesterday. The Honeycrisp is my favorite apple, and I welcome its return each autumn. It tells me we’ve made it through another year, but it also tells me time is swiftly passing. The seasons of a single life eventually run out, and those who love…
Read MoreUntil It’s Done: Writers and Work
(I’m recycling this Labor Day post from two years ago) On this Labor Day weekend, I’m thinking a good deal about work and what it takes to keep doing it. My father farmed all his life until his heart disease forced him to stop. His second heart attack, the one that killed him, happened when…
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