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On Deadline
Darkness enveloped the lone gas station that stood on a rural road surrounded by open fields. I slowed down to take a better look, but I knew I had no choice. This was the only place for miles where there would be a telephone booth. I was on deadline, having just left an important school…
Read MoreLove your Enemies per Leo Tolstoy (in the time of Coronavirus?)
It is a mistake to think that there are times when you can safely address a person without love. You can work with objects without love–cutting wood, baking bricks, making iron–but you cannot work with people without love. In the same way as you cannot work with bees without being cautious, you cannot work with…
Read MoreSilent Reason
She isn’t pretty. Her face is angular in an odd way reminding you of a triangle; her stomach swollen, stretched to its limit. She looks uncomfortable, ungainly even, yet she doesn’t seem inhibited by her pregnancy, climbing about as she does, nimbly moving from leaf to leaf. A few weeks ago, when you spied her…
Read MoreTheir Kind of Music
A short story By Geraldine Birch Oddballs littered the barroom: Old gents in double breasted suits and dames far beyond menopause dressed too fancy for six in the evening, while middle-aged women in business attire sipped cocktails with business associates or lovers. Younger dudes smelling of fish caught in the bay wore sloppy T-shirts and…
Read MoreHelpers vs. the Helped
During our lives, we help each other; sometimes we help other people, sometimes we are helped by others. But the world is formed so that usually some people mostly help others, and some mostly receive their help. As you acquire objects, and you use them, you should keep in mind that they are the product’s…
Read MoreA Note from Lisa See
To continue from my last blog: With the return address on the postcard from Lisa See announcing her newest novel, I realized I could return those postcards of old Los Angeles sent to me ten years ago by Lisa’s mother, Carolyn See. I had contacted Carolyn after reading her energizing book, “Making a Literary Life,”…
Read MoreInspiration from Carolyn See
Sometimes–no, more than sometimes–being a writer gets in the way of being. It seems that I am always doing, and doing becomes tiresome. Because of the doing–meaning “marketing” my books, which I find to be consuming–I completely missed the passing of someone who was my inspiration–the well-known author, Carolyn See. I would have known about…
Read MoreTolstoy’s Weird Novella
I’m currently reading Edith Wharton’s “The Writing of Fiction.” Her multi-independent-clause sentences are decidely hard to plow through; however, Wharton impressed me with her comments about Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata.” Remembering I had a collection of Tolstoy’s works, I plucked the book from the top of my bookshelf and found it. Reading it, however, was…
Read MoreMore About Edith Wharton
It’s fascinating to read about the habits of famous writers. The new book, “Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors,” by Sarah Stodola shares information about Edith Wharton, the author of “The Age of Innocence” which won her the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1921. Wharton was a wealthy woman who wrote about her contemporaries…
Read MoreAdvice from a Legendary Editor
Tips from a legendary editor of Harper’s Magazine says that if we want to tell our stories “out of the wilderness of our experience” we should begin with a notebook or diary. Blindfold the computer, send the phone for a walk in the park– (unglue your cell phone from your right hand), and with pen…
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