Category Archives: writing
12 over 12 Windows
I’m a fairly rational, left-brain person, but some things reason just can’t explain and one of them is writing. Where do ideas come from? Where do fictional characters come from? How do you find out where they live? Most fiction … Continue reading
Squatters Hijack Blog
I don’t want to jinx anything here, but for the last several weeks I’ve been working on novel #2 — and it’s alive. It’s cooking. When I sit down to write, words come through my fingers. Characters show up unannounced. … Continue reading
Got the “Whaddym’I Doin’ Here” Blues
I found this in my old Bloggery while looking for something else. Posted on November 3, 2005. I’ve passed a few milestones since then but the place I’m in now looks a lot the same, even though I’m living in … Continue reading
My Terrorist Eye
I’m trying something a little different here. I wrote “My Terrorist Eye: Risk, the Unexpected, and the War on Terrorism” between 2004 and 2008. The events that inspired it are made clear in the essay. The link below leads to … Continue reading
The Key Sestina
This poem came back to me while I was writing yesterday’s blog. When I lived in D.C., my keys wore holes in the hip pocket of my jeans. On Martha’s Vineyard I carried no keys at all. This might have … Continue reading
Laureation
I hoped I’d made that word up, but no such luck: poets can be laureated, making them poets laureate, and the act of doing so is laureation. The dictionary says so. Laureation, specifically the laureation of poets, is enjoying a … Continue reading
Young Sea Gull
A recent Tompost on TheTomPostPile (a must for anyone who wants to see and hear more about Martha’s Vineyard), “We Meet Death on the Beach,” reminded me of a poem I wrote in October 1985, just a few months after … Continue reading
Writing About MV
When I moved to Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1985, I’d saved enough money to take a frugal year off from my frugal real life and work on the novel I’d started a few years before, tentatively titled Coming … Continue reading
Saved by a Desk
I don’t think I’ll ever become the person whose dwelling is so jam-packed with books, piles of newspapers, and other stuff that she has only narrow aisles to move in. For one thing, moving 12 times in 27 years has … Continue reading
Occupy MV Needs (The) Help
A rush proofreading job had to be in New York on Monday. The job was on paper, meaning (duh!) that it couldn’t be sent electronically. UPS, my usual overnight carrier, doesn’t ship on or off the island on weekends (and … Continue reading
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . 