Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
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 →
Writing can be isolating. As a story forms itself and finds its way onto the page, as we craft, dismantle, and reassemble it in final form, the work is solitary. At its best, this solitude is glorious--writing is where we can be perfectly alone and let the mind go where it will, where any thoughts... Continue Reading →
Some stories seem to move more slowly than drying paint. They elongate scene after scene of a bland character sitting, contemplating, staring at walls. Whole novels can go by without the character doing much more than taking a sip of their watered-down beer as they contemplate the vagaries of their universes. How often do I... Continue Reading →
This last week I participated in an online short story course. One Story's Write a Short Story with Hannah Tinti was an engaging, entertaining, but most of all practically useful one-week course, though which we explored a basic structure for short story writing. This was the first class I've done with One Story, and I... Continue Reading →
As I continue to explore different venues for submitting short stories, one publication different than the others has been Sixfold. Traditional literary journals have a team of readers and editors who vet submissions and curate the publication. Sixfold, instead, has the writers who have submitted stories or poems read, comment, and vote on one another's... Continue Reading →
We have had a brilliant week of weather, with sunny days and clear nights, temperatures just approaching where you can be out in the day without a jacket. We hear it will grow cold again next week, so we've been trying to be outside when we can. Evening at low tide. My motivation for writing... Continue Reading →
Many times I have heard writers talk about a character seeming to lift up off the page, feel real enough that they start telling their own story. Writers say, "The story writes itself. The character told me what they'd do." If I'm honest, most times when I hear these things I roll my eyes. I... Continue Reading →
Over these last couple of years, I have learned the power of goal setting to push my writing forward. In 2021, I set goals for monthly word count, submissions, and publications, and as I could have foreseen, met only the two goals I had meaningful control over. That was a good lesson learned. In 2022,... Continue Reading →
As part of my research for the novel I'm working on, which focuses on ceramics, I've been taking some of my writing time to explore what I can of an important figure in the craft, one who was a "great grandfather" to me in terms of my ceramics education (that is, a teacher of my... Continue Reading →
During the last month, I've read (or listened to) two books of history of different Native American peoples, Staci Drouillard's Walking the Old Road: A People's History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe and Elizabeth Fenn's Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People. These narratives took two... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 