Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
Routines get upended during the holidays. My eight-month-old nephew, who is so sweet, has had his routines disrupted this last week by the Christmas festivities, as well as by his visiting and overly-excited uncles. He gets cranky. He refuses to go down for a nap. I've been privately saying to him, "I'm with you, mister!"... Continue Reading →
For the last two years, I have been setting strategic writing goals for myself to help me keep moving in the direction I want to go. My writing goals in 2021 helped me increase productivity and direct my energies towards the parts of my writing work that felt most important. In 2022, I updated my... Continue Reading →
In my English literature class this term, we have been working on writing theme statements. When we read the two novellas in Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen, we wrote something like this: "Yoshimoto expresses the idea that we can move towards healing from grief by forming human relationships and seeking acceptance." The theme statement helps us wrap... Continue Reading →
I need to keep it short this weekend. This weekend I'm meeting with my writing group and have stories of theirs to read and comment on. And then I've signed up for another writing class that I'm doing over this weekend, about short story beginnings, also through One Story, since I had such a good... Continue Reading →
In this busy autumn term at school, I've been taking time to write when I can. I have a daily goal of devoting 85 minutes to my writing each day (and I include in that time blogging here on Words Like Trees, sending out story submissions, meeting with my writing group, as well as my... Continue Reading →
I can't stop taking scenery pictures. When a vista opens up before me, when the sky clears out crystal-blue, when birch trees turning yellow catch the light, I my phone emerges from my pocket. I say to myself, remember this moment, and I snap a picture. Hundreds of these landscapes appear on my phone. I... Continue Reading →
My biggest questions about stories the last few years have been focused on structure. What is the role of conflict? Do all stories really follow the same dramatic structures, or is this an oversimplification? What alternative story structures might exist (such as Kishลtenketsu), and how do they function in different cultural contexts? When I asked... Continue Reading →
My writing projects these last few months have been short stories. I'm using what I learned in the short story writing class I took through One Story this past summer, which used core principles of dramatic structure to map out conflict, and I think this is helping me make my stories more engaging for readers,... Continue Reading →
The school year began with two weeks of rain. We bustled to class under umbrellas, hiked through spattering mist, scraped mud from our boots and ran the shoe-drier nonstop. "Summer's over," we said. The moment we returned to Norway, fall began. But somehow the last week of August, the sky cleared. The mist that always... Continue Reading →
One of the things I love about teaching literature is the way its central questions push my thinking. Usually teacher-Jimmy and writer-Jimmy inhabit distinct mental spaces, but sometimes the two dovetail alongside. With the start of the new school year, meeting new students, lesson planning, checking how advisees are settling in, I got to have... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 