“The writer isn’t made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses,” E. L. Doctorow observed. How? Why? And what about this whole crazy business, the idiosyncratic process, angst and euphoria of writing in the first place? These are are some of the wide-ranging things that author Meredith Cole and I explore with special guests on The …
One of my favorite questions as a Bible-scholar-lady is “So, what’s the best translation?” I love this question not only because it opens the door to substantive discussion that can last for the better part of a class period… no matter how long the meeting. But I also love it because we get to talk …
Toggling. I think that’s the word. It’s got a good ring, anyway. Attending to one thing here, another there – specifically writing across genres – is giving my new meditation muscles extra gymnastic training. As I bounce between diverse projects with varying levels of responsibility and reward, I’m trying to keep in check all the …
What is it about an other that can be so… well, whatever you wouldn’t come up with yourself? When it comes to creativity — making something new whether on canvas, with sound, in writing, or out of clay – most people work alone. It’s a solitary life, the way of an artist, isn’t it? Then …
At what point in writing does one book become another? In the editing, rewriting, re-editing and re-rewriting of a project engaged over years, should we just call it a different book? (The shadow question is, of course, at what point does one pack it away, brush off one’s hands, and turn to something else?) In …
It was only when I began revising an essay that I discovered what it was about. I had thought the piece would be a simple meditation on what I’d learned about Cyrus the Great over these past few years – the sexy “messiah” byline, author of the first declaration of human rights, all that… and …
What if I took a psalm a day, read it, took a walk, and returned to my desk with jot-able thoughts? There are the year-of-living-some-way books, the applications-of-a-classic books, the travel-across-somewhere or enduring-peculiar-deprivations books,… Why not a scholar’s-nonscholarship-of-a-biblical-book book? Turns out, there are several reasons not, not for me, anyway, not now. The house where …
I have been writing in a closet lately. It’s not that I don’t have another, actually quite wonderful place to work. But that other place is a super old building (tough to say – early to mid 1800’s?) that’s not quite water tight, and it’s been a rainy summer. Besides, the view from there is …
I was just thinking: wouldn’t it be fun to have a spot to feature artifacts, documents, persons, architecture, anything concrete related to my historical fiction set in ancient Babylon and Persia? Perhaps provide a wee bit of commentary, maybe how the things fit into the story,…? In the absence of any nay-sayers (admittedly none nearby …
Whatever possessed me to tell uber-expert Dr. Amelie Kuhrt that I’ve made Cambyses I a depressed opium addict subject to the clutches of an evil groundsman in ancient Persia?! It couldn’t have been the alcohol — I was drinking tea, she hot cocoa. But what what a thrill to be able to talk nonstop for …
