For whatever reason, I’m thinking this morning about the openings of short stories and what we expect of them. Rust Hills, in his excellent book, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, says the end of a good story is always present in its beginning. The final move of a story is only…

A few days ago, I was telling my cousin that I used to have problems managing my anger. She asked me what I’d done to help me let that anger go. Without thinking, I said I wrote a book called From Our House. It’s true. Writing that memoir about my father’s farming accident, the angry…

Because my father was a farmer, we didn’t travel much when I was a kid. The crops and the livestock needed constant attention. A farmer can’t afford to wander. It was only after my father sold our stock that we started to take a few trips. We went to the Illinois State Fair in Springfield…

A wild turkey crossed the road in front of me this morning, and as I slowed, it started to run through the grass—running, running, running in a most unseemly fashion before spreading wings, lifting into the air, and taking flight. Starting a piece of writing is sometimes that way for me. I feel like I’m…

Over the weekend, I was at my aunt’s house and I was looking for a fork. I opened every kitchen drawer and found no silverware. Finally, I gave up and asked where a guy might find a fork? Turns out that my aunt has a concealed drawer that opens up above a drawer that holds…

In 1990, I bought a La-Z-Boy rocker/recliner for my study, and spent a number of years sitting in it, writing. I still own that chair, and, when I want some time to ponder or to daydream while working on an essay, a story, a novel, that’s where I go. There’s something about the gentle rocking…

Recently, I made a trip to the farm my family owned in southeastern Illinois. Yes, I was trespassing, but I took nothing but memories and a few photos, so I hope the current owners will understand. One of the photos was of the cistern behind the farmhouse. I remember, as a child, lowering a sorghum…

Today is my mother’s birthday. She’d be 101 years-old. She was a soft-spoken woman who put others before herself. Some may have thought her meek, but she had a fierce strength inside her that allowed her to endure the twists and turns her life took. She was a woman who knew how to endure, a…

My Aunt Mildred, pictured above in her youth, will be having open heart surgery on Tuesday in Springfield, Illinois. I’ll be there with her, remembering her stories of how when I was a small child, she would take me to the gravel road that ran by my grandmother’s house and patiently sit with me while…

I’ll be brief today. Just a few thoughts about prose rhythm and what a writer can gain by paying attention at the level of the sentence. Ellen Gilchrist’s short story, “A Love Story,” is exactly what it says it is, the story of a man and woman coming together in old age. Here are the…