“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 …
For now, the swish and swish is all there is. The wooden handle of a rake with its metal-tined delta is all that I, who have come soul-tired, need. That, modest strength in my shoulders, and the blue tarp onto which I toss leaves with a swing that despite everything can’t but be joyous. It’s …
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 …
May the work of this day bear the print of your heart. Ah, Marc Chagall, thank you for this and for so many wonderful paintings! Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised to find Gibran’s The Prophet illustrated by Chagall, as it was Khalil Gibran who said, “Work is love made visible. And if you cannot …
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 …
Here’s what I just posted on Huffington Post… and then, here’s the problem with it. Now if only there were about three hundred more 300‘s. Maybe not in blood and gore but movies with kick-ass women from ancient Persia and Greece. Then, more people would get what has so captivated me about Amytis, Cassandane, and …
300, Awesome Ancient Women, and the Perils of Historical Fiction Read More »
It was a great honor to be invited to give the Dillard series of lectures at Trinity United Methodist Church this year. Wow, what a turn-out! and what wonderfully warm, hospitable, and thoughtful folks I met there, people deeply invested in the pursuit of understanding, committed as much to the humbling business of query 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 …
