Yesterday, I accidentally found myself hiking the Appalachian Trail. How does one “accidentally” hike the Appalachian Trail? By hiking a trail that overlaps the A.T. for a short distance. Pleasant surprise! I’m here in western Massachusetts visiting relatives for the Easter holiday. Under Saturday’s brilliant sky, I went looking for a trail to hike. Decided […]
More Editing
Three days after creating my chapter and scene notecards, I’m making sense of my category and themes, ready to continue editing. The category is Coming of Age. The themes were not so obvious to me. However, when you simplify the contents of your childhood into a patchwork pattern on a table, suddenly the themes that […]
Editing Memoir
Editing memoir is a long slog. The first draft is easy. It’s bleed onto the page. Dance on the page. Sing on the page. Burn. Cry. Get angry. Pour it all out. Dig back to the beginning. Try to remember every last detail. Then the editing began. Editing is when the doubts creep in. Who […]
My Young Friend Antwan
Today I was reading a sample issue of the literary journal The Sun, July 2013, to see what style of memoir essays they publish. I came across a superb piece by Afro-Am author and University of Illinois Professor of Creative Writing Ross Gay about being a black man in the U.S. About the fear of […]
Witness to the Suicide Contract
This morning I was researching a brilliant style of creative non-fiction called the “hermit crab essay”, which derives its style from ordinary, non-literary types (a recipe, a police report, an obituary…) to create the structure for its subject matter. It’s a sub-genre that I want to attempt… very soon. I was reading an example in […]
Actun Tunichil Muknal
Belize’s Actun Tunichil Muknal has been named the #1 Sacred Cave in the World by National Geographic. That distinction alone is enough to attract serious archaeology fans and spelunkers from all over the world. Add the fact that accessing the cave requires a one hour hike through the jungle, while crossing the meandering Roaring River […]
The Hunted
I was breathless. I darted barefoot across the length of my mother’s kitchen on the second floor of the creaky hundred-year-old farmhouse, bumping around chairs and pushing off the harsh edge of the table top as I cut a vee through the pungent scent of the morning’s coffee and burnt toast. The chilly floor was […]
Write Now
Do you put pressure on yourself to produce X number of pages or X number of words per day? When you fail, do you beat yourself up? It’s no wonder. Writers are constantly being directed to produce, produce, produce! Never mind the quality. Just spit it out! Quantity is what they want. Preferably 80,000 words […]
Babci and Me. Courage.
My babci (grandmother), Róża, was only seventeen when she boarded the train to Antwerp—alone— near Kolno, in northeast Poland. It was December 1911, three years shy of the turmoil of World War I. Stars sparkled in the moonlight on the coarse crust of the deep frozen snow and young Róża drew her cheap coat closer […]
Attention, Whiners (That Would Be Me)
Midlife Crisis Alert. The day before yesterday, I had a weird day of self-pitying confusion. I was chalking it up to just general tiredness after a busy day, writing deep self-exploratory memoir material in a beautiful tropical setting that contrasted vastly with my frame of mind. However, this morning a link to an article about […]