The day was looking good. Kids breakfasted and lunches bagged, they went off together to school. I had only one item on my calendar before the late afternoon’s rash of meets/games/matches, and yes, it appeared that a good writing day was ahead of me. An excellent writing day. I love those. Writing is, after all, […]
Read moreSo I’ve had first sentences on my brain for a while, ever since that post I wrote a few weeks ago. I like noticing how writers begin things, how, perhaps, they try to lure their readers in with the first few words. It’s no small task getting someone to read one’s writing. After all, in […]
Read moreI like letters. The shapes of them. The contrast between lower and upper case. The dots for the “i” and “j,” crossing “t’s.” I like writing very small. I like putting more than one line of text inside one line of college-ruled paper. I like college-ruled paper. I like a good pen. Not a fancy […]
Read moreYesterday I finished chapter 9 of this third draft of my novel. At 5,479 words, it is not quite the longest chapter in the book (as of yet): chapter 2 is a hefty 6,621 words. But still, it’s long. As of now, this draft is 34,266 words and, by my reckoning, about 1/3 finished. After […]
Read more“First sentences are doors to worlds.”—Ursula K. LeGuin Last night was Will’s first soccer game of the school year. It’s still more than a week before the first day of school, but soccer has been underway for a while now. Yesterday’s game felt familiar: the boys tore up the field and all of us parents […]
Read moreI have just now finished chapter five of this latest draft. The chapter is 2,864 words long, which brings the grand total of words in this draft to 20,227. They say that most novels are between 80,000 and 100,000 words. Does this mean that I am between 1/4 and 1/5 of the way done? If […]
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Once upon a time, I wanted to be Mary. The Santa thing never really took hold in me so much as Mary’s story did, and I would imagine myself to be her: thirteen or so, pregnant, sitting side-saddle on a saddle-less donkey, making my loping way toward Bethlehem. I was a dramatic child, drawn to […]
Read moreThey’ve asked me to write them a poem, my boys have. In four-four time. And it will not, in fact, be so much of a poem as it will be song lyrics, lyrics written for the music they have already written during one of their music sessions in the basement. They are on their instruments […]
Read morefrom supper– a magnificent pork loin, straight out of Julia Child’s cookbook, and a salad of spinach and apples. from laundry– piles and piles and piles of it, clean and folded and waiting (still) for me to put away. from homework duty– though Everett had finished his and Emma Grace almost, but she would finish […]
Read moreLucas van Valckenborch’s painting Winter Landscape hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria and also all over my coffee table. It’s been there for about five days now, and its over 500 loose pieces have been reduced to just over one hundred, I’m guessing. My progress has been slow but steady, and certainly slower […]
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