Posts Tagged ‘fiction’
The Golden Times: Adding Texture to Our Characters and Their Stories
Cathy and I have had a pleasant weekend. Yesterday, we hosted a few graduate students from Ohio State and inducted them into our Patio Club. (By the way, anyone is welcome. Just let us know if you’d like to join.) Today, we attended a high school graduation party. At the latter event, Cathy watched all…
Read MoreNow There’s Something You Don’t See Every Day
My apologies for being late with my post this morning. Cathy and I drove back from South Carolina yesterday after attending her granddaughter’s wedding. Somewhere in North Carolina or Virginia (the miles blur for me), we were in stop-and-go traffic because of a wreck ahead of us. We were creeping along when we heard something…
Read MoreUsing Relics in Narratives
Yesterday, my wife Cathy was sorting through her purse when she came upon her now-expired YMCA membership card. “I guess I don’t need this anymore,” she said. Indeed our membership cards are now relics of a before-time that no longer exists, that time when COVID had yet to arrive. During the pandemic, we bought our…
Read MoreLoving Even Our Darkest Characters
My mother and father weren’t huggers, nor were many of the other adults where I grew up. Reticent Midwesterners all, they rarely offered more than a firm handshake. As I went through my adult years, my world expanded to include people for whom hugging was natural, and increasingly I found myself in social and professional…
Read MoreGather and Release: The Energy of a Narrative
Finally, after a brutal stretch of snow and ice and cold, temperatures have moderated, and the thaw has begun. All that snow will now melt to water and run off into streams and tributaries and storm drains. Once we get above freezing, it has to go somewhere, right? During what I like to think of…
Read MoreGo Big or Go Home: Creating Plot
My wife and I had the pleasure of visiting a book club in Casey, Illinois, last week, just about an hour from where we grew up. Casey has taken it upon itself to be the capital of the largest things in the world. We saw the world’s largest wind chime, the world’s largest rocking chair,…
Read More