Blog
Questions 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 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…
Read MoreWhere’s the Heat?
Now that cold weather has come here in central Ohio, our orange tabby, Stella the Cat, often hovers over a heat vent waiting for the furnace to kick on. She’s a heat seeker, our girl, and she knows the parts of the house that heat up the quickest. She’s patient, knowing from experience that sooner…
Read MoreTurn On the Lights and Be Fully Present
Cathy and I put up our Christmas trees this weekend. We have a prelit flocked artificial tree in our family room, and we also put a tree on our front porch. The flocked tree was new last year, and wouldn’t you know it, the lights on one of the sections wouldn’t work. The company had…
Read MorePrompts for the Doldrums
That time of year when we set our clocks back an hour has rolled around, paving the way for winter days of short light. I don’t know about you, but here in central Ohio the cold and the dark are enough to sometimes send me into the doldrums. I just looked up the etymology of…
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