yourpassions.tk

After four hundred posts on this blog, I need a break. I'm "going to the beach," figuratively if not literally, until mid-June. While I'm away, I invite you to browse through the archives. There is something here for anyone. Use the search field at the very top left corner to find a collection of posts on nearly any aspect of life writing.  I will be checking email and welcome questions. And who knows ... Sarabelle whispers insistently, I may even pop in a post or two. But mostly I'll be working on some urgent projects that require my current attention. Keep those fingers flying and write on! P.S. It took me about seven extra steps and ten minutes to get the photo into this blog. Blogger continues to tweak features in a way that presumably makes things easy enough for a chimpanzee to produce an elegant blog.  Now, don't take this as any sort of disrespect for chimpanzees: Tatu's artwork hangs in my powder room. Tatu was a resident of the primate research l...

In my last post, I mentioned best-selling author Tawni O’Dell’s observation that reading is the best way to improve your writing. In line with that advice, I read piles of memoirs. I recently read two memoirs written by authors three decades younger than I, and at first I found them disconcerting. In general and compared to my own, the younger generation has a rather cavalier attitude toward sex, living together out of wedlock, and unwed parenthood, so it’s no surprise that such topics are openly covered in memoir in ways sometimes approaching reality television. I was challenged to suspend judgment and accept the authors’ Truth at face value. Once I was able to do this, I could more fully appreciate their views of the world. From there I also realized that shock value had obscured certain aspects of the stories. One of the authors seemed to be relying on sensationalism to hold reader attention. The story had little substance and never came to any closure or significant insight. This a...

News Flash: I'm honored to a guest blogger today on my good blogger buddy Karen Walker's Following the Whispers blog. Click over and pay her a visit. Yesterday I drove thirty miles to hear Tawni O'Dell speak at Westmoreland Community College. Tawni's first published novel, Back Roads , was an Oprah pick in March 2000. Tawni is a stunning speaker — funny, profound, intimate, and brilliantly articulate. I hung on every world for nearly two hours. Her long, face-framing mane of dark frizz gives the impression of an ultra-high-energy person attuned to other spheres, and perhaps she is. She told us that her characters "find her," not the other way around. She must write the books to get these people out of her head. Being invaded by characters is not a situation faced by memoir writers, (though perhaps it isn't so different from being obsessed with how to tell our memoir story), but she did make some points I especially appreciated. One was to always ...

My Grandmother Clara was known far and wide for her fabulous white cakes. During a visit one summer while I was in my mid-teens, she showed me her secrets. One of them was to sift the flour not once, but seven times. She always used Pillsbury’s Best flour — though she may have switched to Swans Down Cake Flour in her later years. She always slathered Seven Minute Frosting on it, and my very favorite was when she covered the frosting with coconut. Although I know she baked this cake practically every time we visited, most have slid into a composite memory of Grandmother Clara’s White Cake. But one in particular stands out in memory. The year I was five, she baked her cake for my birthday, fixing it my favorite way, with coconut on the frosting. She wrapped it carefully in waxed paper (plastic wrap was decades away), set it in a box, and filled the empty space in the box with popcorn. Then she took it down to the Greyhound station in Clovis, New Mexico and put it on  a bus to Albuquerque...

When I read something on Karen Walker's Following the Whispers blog a couple of weeks ago about working with her writing coach, Mark David Gerson , Since I also do coaching, I was curious about her experience working with someone else, and thought readers also would be. I asked Karen if she'd do a guest blog. When she agreed, I sent her a list of questions, and she used them to do the post as a written interview. I hope you'll find it as enlightening as I do.  Thank you Karen! Why did you decide to work with a coach? I saw Mark David Gerson’s book, Voice of the Muse in a bookstore and was immediately drawn to it. I didn’t purchase it that day. Then, at a New Mexico Book Coop meeting (a support organization for writers), I met him. He happened to have his books with him, so I bought it. Reading it, I felt as if a very wise spiritual guide/writer was whispering in my ear, helping me on my writing journey. When I decided to switch genres, from memoir to fiction, I felt as if...

Photo by Fakelvis I’m ready to write. My file is open, my fingers poised. But wait, I see the e-mail icon. I’m a dog and the bell just rang — w atch me drool. I click to e-mail. Ah, it’s a good thing I did. That download I want to listen to will expire in four more hours. Better snag it! Hmm, while I have that folder open, I’ll slide it over to my Zen so I can listen later. Where did I put that thing? Oh yes — it’s in the kitchen. As long as I’m in the kitchen, I think I’ll make a cup of tea. That will only take a minute, and tea helps me think while I write. Now, while I wait for the water to boil, I’ll unload the dishwasher. I didn’t get around to that earlier. There, now my tea is too hot to drink, so I’ll take just a minute to put the cereal bowls in the washer, and now I’ll wipe the counters, and put the cinnamon away — Oops! crumbs on the spice shelf. I’ve been meaning to clean that mess, and it’s ant season. Better get to it! Well, shucks. My tea’s cold. Oh well, I can drink it...

When I read something especially juicy and anyone’s within earshot, I can’t resist the temptation to read aloud. My spouse has grown used to this, sometimes enjoying the passages, but mostly staring at me to remind me he prefers to read things for himself — unless he’s driving the car. A few minutes ago I picked up a new memoir and began reading. The first sentence screamed to be read, and since he was working on a crossword nearby, he was fair game. I continued into another paragraph before he stared me down. I suppressed my chuckle. “Sounds like an author who uses a lot of adjectives,” he commented. “What?” I’d read fewer than a dozen lines from a small page. I glanced at the passage and selected words popped out. Audaciously French ... pigeon gray pebbles ... most gigantic pair of hedge clippers . Every adjective was doubled. “I don’t like authors who use excessive adjectives,” he continued. “They sound like they’re trying to impress people with their ability to describe in great d...

Photo: Baslow Today is one of those transition days in the rhythm of the year. It could equally well have been yesterday, but today the full “shift” occurred. The temperature outside is 82º, unseasonably warm for April 2 in Pittsburgh. It’s definitely sandals, shorts, and tank top weather. I worked in the yard for a couple of hours and my back has that delightfully flushed and healthy feeling (I know — it’s really not healthy, unless you count all the extra vitamin D). I’m pleasantly tired. And now I’m sitting out on my sun porch with iced coffee and open windows. I’m enjoying the breeze, listening to birds, and smiling at the riotous abundance of forsythia and daffodils on the hillside beyond. The record snowfall of a few weeks ago is fading from memory. The “shift”? This day is sensory validation that we have officially passed into Light Time, my personal term for the part of year when daylight exceeds darkness, and light clothing takes the place of dark, heavy apparel. It’s a time ...