The weather’s a bit chilly. May stay in.
Posting for Travel with Intent’s Silent Sunday.
Tag: writing process
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This challenge is hosted by Xingfu Mama.
Quoting XM:
A PHOTO CHALLENGE OF PLACES WE SIT…OR MIGHT SIT…OR ART ABOUT SITTING
Without further ado: a red couch! Perfect for napping in-between writing sessions.
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Posting for Life of B’s November Walking Squares Challenge: Early morning walk to Annaghmakerrig Lake.
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Last year, I read Eddie’s Boy and marveled at how fleet it was. I learned it was the sequel to Butcher’s Boy, published thirty years earlier. So of course I had to read Butcher’s Boy. Wowee! Perry’s laconic main character is a one-man killing machine — there is nothing like him out there.
Here’s an excerpt from Michael Connelly’s Introduction to Butcher’s Boy:
- Over the years and the million of words, I have come to learn that it is all about character and velocity. A book is like a car. It pulls up to the curb and the passenger door swings open to the reader. The engine revs. Do you want a ride?
I am thinking about this Introduction right now because of my current read: How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu. This book is certainly a ride. It’s supposedly a novel: it isn’t. It’s a collection of stories, each showing the effects of a deadly virus that was released from the ice by scientists in Siberia. It begins at the beginning: in Siberia. Then skips to the future, when the virus has spread. The stories are absolutely heartbreaking. But she is along for this ride, holy cow. She most definitely is.
Stay tuned.
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Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan, Ireland Posting for Mid-Week Monochrome # 107.
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- For the challenge this week, I am asking you to share images that focus on your journeys. Consider examples of historical modes of transportation if you happen to have some in your gallery, a horse-drawn wagon in Pennsylvania, or maybe an abandoned boat along the seashore.
— Journeys with Johnbo, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 215
Below: the bus self took from Belfast to Downpatrick, Northern Ireland
In April, self visited NI for the first time. She did a residency at River Mill, near Downpatrick. Crushed the writing: finished her horror story/alien invasion story, The Rorqual, and completely re-wrote a few others. Placed a story while she was still there: “Residents of the Deep,” coming soon in J Journal.
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On-line through UCLA Extension Writers Program
Starts Aug. 3, ends Sept. 13
Registration details here.
Don’t trash that “failed story”, dear readers. If anyone can resuscitate it, I can.
Never give up. Just keep on row, row, rowing your boat. It’s hard, but one day you might just win the race.
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Teaching this class, which is all about process.
It is a short class, as are all self’s on-line classes. Because she likes to get in, get down, get dirty, and get out before students get tempted to coast.
Go here to see all of UCLA Extension’s Creative Writing classes.
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The theme this week of Travel with Intent’s One-Word Sunday is WALL.
Here’s the wall of self’s room at River Mill, Northern Ireland, where she spent April writing.
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One of my most enjoyable reads of 2021 were bookends: The Butcher’s Boy, published 1982 and, forty years later, Eddie’s Boy.
Michael Connolly wrote the Introduction to the 2003 trade paperback edition of The Butcher’s Boy:
It used to be that the quickest way for me to descend into a creative depression would be for someone to approach me and identify him — or herself — as a fan of my work, but to then add the dreadful line “But your first one is still my favorite.”
It didn’t matter if the approach was in person at a bookstore or on the street, or through the U.S. mail or the Internet. I always took it very badly, and the compliment would serve to make me question what I was doing . . . There was a time when I would actually respond, hoping to dissuade the reader of his or her own words, saying things like, “That’s impossible!” or “You don’t really mean that!” But I soon realized it wasn’t impossible and they did really mean it.
And that is the source of the depression; that’s the rub. Writing, whether you consider it a craft or an art or both, is something that should get better with practice. It stands to reason. Writing comes from experience, curiosity, and knowledge. In short, it comes from life. The writer must improve with age and experience and life.
And that, too, is the reason there are so many creative writing programs, all over the world. This belief that writing should get better, that it’s a process.
Self wishes she could reproduce the entire Introduction here, but alas! It might be online somewhere? It’s really worth reading.
Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 