Archives for 0

Approaching Solstice

I’m marveling at gaps in consciousness, thanks to the Milky Way. I saw a picture of it on the web, and I froze. Something said Wait: What’s so strange about this picture? I stared at it, listening. I collected other pictures of it. Still entranced, I researched other cultures’ names for it, other mythologies. Dimly, […]

Protected: The Goldfinch

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Speculative Magical Links

Unusual worlds are opening. I’ve been journeying along one of my less-traveled paths, returning to a lifelong love of fantastical stories. Clues to my own emerging voice pop out of page and screen. This post’s trip report has links to a few favorites, some notes on writing and consciousness, and a little peach-flavored magic realism. The […]

Voice II

“If I write that, people will think it’s me.” This quote from Amy Tan, in her spirited TED talk about writing fiction, has been singing to me for days. It struck the place in me that’s so focused on integrity that the idea of representing something that’s not-me, when my name is on it, felt dangerous, […]

Merit in the Marketplace

A phenomenal new wordal popped out of the dictionary this morning: the mer root within merit. Turns out it started as sale value, leading to the Latin meretrix (prostitute) and the English meretricious (attractive in a vulgar way). This surprise led to contemplation of merit badges, merit scholars, meritocracies, certificates of merit, earning merit in religious […]

Alchemical Storytellers

Just finished redesigning a house. A bank account. A host of motives. Woke up this morning knowing my novella’s main character’s circumstances were all wrong for the plot, mismatched for the themes. Switched it around in a great rush. Then rested, wondering where those first images had come from, why they’d felt right before, even […]

Voice, Format, Audience

Mercy. Another writing career. The inner machinery of expression – the place I go to inside, to feel words form – is changing again. It’s being altered by the convergence of two worlds from opposite extremes: (1) inside-out: shaping ever-subtler inner experience into outer form, and (2) outside-in: practicing the audience-driven formats of screenplays and […]

Re-Oriented Spring

Rebirth freshens the air, now from a different perspective. My mind’s eye sees Earth tilting, northern hemisphere more warmed and brightened by a fireball, itself hurtling through space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour in a giant galaxy – a spiral of light among millions. Scoping in closer, I feel, simultaneously, the entry […]

Mythic Reconception

My laughter at the cartoon turned heads in the store: a solar system with a red arrow pointing toward Earth saying “You Are Here … If That Helps Any.”  The “here” lasts only for a sub-instant, since we are spinning at unimaginable speeds through unrepeatable space. Locating “You” in a chaotic universe (in ancient myths, a […]