the Truth has a Price
I am most grateful to the Globe & Mail for publishing my essay, THE TRUTH HAS A PRICE, wherein I discuss the responsibilities facing writers and how memory and the truth may be far more fluid things than they appear. You can read it here.
Read MoreThe Magic (Music?) of Storytelling
Where do you get your ideas from? How often I’ve been asked that. How do writers begin? How do we get past the surface of the blank page, down to the place Robert Olen Butler calls “From Where You Dream”? Which is the name of his excellent book on the process of writing fiction. In…
Read MoreThe death of my darlings
Editing. If you’re like me, it’s a more pleasurable part of the writing life than facing that blank page every morning, but it’s not without it’s agonies. ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’ – Sir…
Read MoreThe writer is 'branded'
Publishers and agents will sometimes ask a writer about his or her branding. They want to know what the marketability of the writer is. What the backstory is. They want to know what the publicity angle will be for a book. And, more often than not, they want the writer to provide this information, if…
Read MoreWaiting…sometimes patiently
The author, waiting (photo by Ron Davis) If you’re anything like me, you spend a good deal of your life waiting, watching, squinting your eyes toward the horizon, pacing, jingling the coins in your pocket, taping your foot, drumming your fingernails on the tabletop, wondering if maybe, just maybe that speck out there is the…
Read MoreMaking Peace with the Writer's Mind
A few years ago I suffered a moderate depression. I get them now and then, and certainly I come by them honestly, as anyone who knows me can testify. Usually I go to bed for a few days and then shake it off, but in this case, after a month of lolling on the couch…
Read MoreGod's Three-Ring Circus
When I was down in Tennessee recently, I attended the Otey Memorial Parish Church, an Episcopalian church in Sewanee, and there I heard a truly wonderful sermon by Rev. Francis X. Walter. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at a church down south. I haven’t been an Episcopalian for all that…
Read MoreDavid Blackwood dreams…. a Newfoundland history
When I was in Newfoundland recently I came upon a book of David Blackwood prints. I’ve been a fan of Blackwood’s work for a long time. His images of whales in black, impossibly deep waters and men in impossibly small dories next to icebergs the size of skyscrapers; veiled mummers and steadfast grandmothers; lost ships,…
Read MoreThat's some good place…
The lonely, perfect beach at the end of Skerwink Trail, Newfoundland (photo: Ron Davis) As I’ve doubtless said before, I am drawn to the wild and windswept places in the world, and few spots fit the bill like Newfoundland where The Best Beloved and I recently spent a holiday. Twenty-two years ago, when he and…
Read MoreView from the mountaintop II – Spiritual journal
My last post was about the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly in Tennessee, where I went recently to lead a workshop on keeping a spiritual journal. In that post I talked about Monteagle and the people there. Today I’ll talk about the workshop itself. There’s a line in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous about a…
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