Rules for life writing: Get a life. Pay attention. Find a favorable form. Then what?
BACKING UP AND ADDING ON
August 26, 2024 by
Backing up into a parking space is normal? It’s getting that way, but there’re still holdouts. – People who always back into to parking spaces think they better than us. – I back into my parking space in the garage and the garage is inclined up…I also do it with a manual transmission car, […]
YOU WANT ME TO WANT TO?
July 17, 2024 by
In Patrick DeWitt’s novel French Exit, the mom asks her thirty-two year old son to get something for her. “Please bring me my cup.” “I will if you want me to.” “I want you to want to.” And he obeys. So I ask . . .
SISTERS BROTHERS BOOK, MOVIE, AND MORE
June 25, 2024 by
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt spooked me from the moment it showed up. What kind of tricky title was that. Would it be about brothers and sisters, sisters who wanted to be brothers? I had to find out, and so I did. I picked it up and read it. Then what?
YOUR STORY: WHERE TO START
June 1, 2024 by
Your story is like every story: waiting to be told. You: But, Blogger Dave I sound dumb when I write it down. Me: What’s dumb sound like. You: It makes me sound like a blogger. Me:
LOST HIGHWAY? GET A MAP, BOOMER
September 19, 2023 by
The Lost Highway by Hank Williams is every road ever traveled. Some longer, some shorter, but it’s the same road. You can say you’re not lost. Go ahead. But we’re all old enough to know better.
BLUE SKIES IN THE BOOK REVIEW MIRROR
August 31, 2023 by
Blue Skies came to me via Twitter. T.C. Boyle mentioned a new novel and he delivered. What he delivered felt a little too close to home for me, which kept me reading. How close?
KEEP GRINDING, WRITERS
August 14, 2023 by
“Keep grinding’ is the message all writers tell themselves, but not out loud. Instead, what they say is their word count for the day. Maybe it’s a thousand, maybe more. The message they send is keep grinding.
ESSENTIAL READING TO IGNORE . . . AT YOUR OWN RISK
January 18, 2020 by
One blogger’s essential reading is another’s fire-starter; that’s just how it is. Except the book in Ken Kesey’s hand won’t start any fires today, not the way it started fires in his younger days.
WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT JAY GATSBY?
August 28, 2019 by
The Great Gatsby patrols the modern world with Jay Gatsby walking point. (Just finished Hemingway’s Movable Feast. Scott Fitzgerald came in at the end. He and Papa were buddies in Paris before Zelda slipped a gear. In 2011 Paula McLaine wrote a novel called The Paris Wife about the same time. Read both books for […]
