Writing about place, people, and whatever parts of the universe I'm lucky to see.
My sister is, as far as I can tell, a financial genius. I might, with a knowing air, explain what "bonds" are to a class when teaching The Great Gatsby, but in a conversation with my sister, I realize quickly that I speak really with the self-contentment of naiveté. I might know my "bull" and... Continue Reading →
Let me begin this post as clearly as I can, knowing that the later paragraphs will invariably (for I have already written them and know) diverge, get muddy, lose themselves. I'll be clear: Good writing must be readily understandable. Clarity of expression should be a writer's foremost goal. Artistry of language, implied meaning, symbolism--these things... Continue Reading →
Just shy of a month ago, I sat down and set myself a few writing goals. I set a goal for word count and a goal for submissions. A perhaps foolhardy goal for publications too I set. During January, I chipped away at these. Let's make an update of where things stand. I'll share some... Continue Reading →
When the tide recedes, great shards of frozen fjord shatter against the shore. The ocean leaves them there as it pulls back from the land, and they pile up in a jagged ruin that stretches all around the bay at Flekkefjord. When the sun is blazing and the tide is moving at its fastest, you... Continue Reading →
My junior year of high school, I took an elective English class entitled Philosophy in Literature. We thirty teenagers and one brilliant, grandfatherly teacher crowded into that classroom to sift our way from Bishop Berkeley to Plato's Cave, Bertrand Russell to Kierkegaard to Kant's Categorical Imperative. All of these thinkers were brand new to me,... Continue Reading →
Copyright is of course a blessing for writers--it's there to maintain our rights to our own work, sanctioning those who would copy it or pass it off as their own. Copyright helps keep artistic work a viable industry. But from the other side, the writer who wants to incorporate quotations or references to others' works... Continue Reading →
We arrived back in Norway to an incredible winter pageant. A couple inches of snow was encrusted everywhere by the most overwhelming display of ice crystals I have ever seen. Half and inch to an inch long, flat and shiny, sparkling, brilliant blue, the whole world was growing these crystal shards somehow like metallic mushrooms,... Continue Reading →
There's the kind of talk at the end of the day when you're tired, when everyone's had a day of work and stress and all you want to do is sleep. There's the kind of talk with the friend you're catching up with, sequential and summary, the "did I tell you about this?" the "this... Continue Reading →
I write today from Chicago, where we are quarantining before we visit family. The decision to travel in these times was a difficult one. During the summer, we determined we could not leave Norway. This time, with more information, we made the choice to come, and I pray it was the right one. In my... Continue Reading →
Can a non-writer learn the tools of the trade, or are great writers born with something different? Is writing a gift--the kind of thing you either have or lack--or is writing a learned skill that any person can develop? Questions of this ilk have sometimes plagued me, as an aspiring writer first, later as a... Continue Reading →
Jimmy Kindree 