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Decorating a Scene: Description in Narrative
Here we are on Memorial Day, and our peonies are in bloom. These showy, fragrant flowers were in every bouquet that my mother always made to set upon our family’s graves on what we then called Decoration Day. I look forward to their buds opening this time of year, not only because I enjoy their…
Read MoreTime and Narrative in Memoir
When it comes to writing memoir, we can never give full expression to an entire life. We have too much from which to choose—too much time, too many moments, too many characters, too many questions. We can, though, find a narrative arc that, if handled skillfully, will contain more of the past, the present, and…
Read MoreWriting into the Mysterious and the Unresolved
On this Easter Sunday, I’m thinking of the small country church I attended when I was a small boy. The Berryville Church of Christ sat on a gravel road just south of the crossroads where my grandmother lived cattycorner from the general store. There wasn’t much to Berryville: that store, two churches, a defunct school,…
Read MoreThe Best Days: Deepening Stories with the Ordinary
Yesterday, a Saturday, I worked out while Cathy slept in, and later we went out for breakfast. It was a beautiful October day here in the Midwest—sunny and warm—and we’d talked about going down to Circleville for the Pumpkin Show, but Cathy had gotten home late the night before after a week in Illinois for…
Read MoreMaking Stories Matter in Creative Nonfiction
I could tell you a story, as I do in my essay, “Bastards,” about the night a young man opened the back door to our house and stepped inside while my mother was washing dishes. I could recall, fact by fact, what happened next. The relevant question for those of us who write creative nonfiction…
Read MoreLeaving the Retreat: Keep Doing the Good Work
I’ve just come home from the Antioch Writers’ Workshop Fall Retreat, where today I listened to writers talk about how important it is for them to find the time to do what makes them happy—moving words about on the page. I’ve been among folks who enjoyed the gift of time this weekend. They made significant…
Read MoreFacing the Blank Page: The Courage It Takes to Write
We’re one week away from the official publication date for my new craft book, Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life, so I thought I’d post the acknowledgment page from the book along with a selection from “The Writing Life” section that pays tribute to my mother and to all she unknowingly…
Read MoreTelling Stories: Writing about Writing
We’re two weeks away from the official publication date for my craft book, Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life, something I never could have seen coming when I started this blog way back when. Before this blog, I’d never done much writing about writing. Instead, I’d done a good bit of…
Read MoreMoving Forward: Stella the Cat Gives Writers Advice
Last week, Cathy and I went to our local humane society and adopted a cat, an eight month-old orange tabby we named Stella. As we understand it, female orange tabby cats are rare, so Stella is special indeed for all sorts of reasons. Our poems, stories, essays, novels, memoirs are all special as well, marked…
Read MoreBad Parental Advice for Future Writers
When I was a boy on our farm in southeastern Illinois, my parents had a telephone that was on a party line, which meant that if a small boy chose, as this one did, to pick up the phone from time to time, he might be able to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. My grandmother…
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