I will be haunted by John Haines 's The Stars, the Snow, the Fire for many years to come. The ease (or grace) with which he handled the brutality of hunting and trapping lulled me into a deceptive calm, but his imagery was too graphic to pass by without a…
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Nature Morte
Still Life. Stopping before Cezanne's painting, I see exactly what there is to see. A rough-hewn table. Burnished fruits rolling off a solid white plate. The shining curve of a wine glass, empty. Curtains folded back into a thick darkness. A window or wall. And a pitcher painted with flowers.…
Finding my Bearings
I've decided that my blog should also be a place to record and analyze and chart my process as a writer. Right now I just throw stuff up here the way I pitch spaghetti noodles at the kitchen wall, hoping that they'll stick. But a writing life is often more…
Shot After Shot: A Craft Annotation
In college I studied Shooting an Elephant (1936), an essay included in this collection, which recounts George Orwell's time as a young British police officer in Burma. The essay has haunted me in the years since. It was the brutality that stuck with me, the killing scene, one which goes…
If I'm not careful, I'll catch myself writing.
Image via Wikipedia If I'm not careful, I'll catch myself writing. I will be swept by the spotlights of my conscious mind, and the hazards of the terrain will be magnified. Second-guessed words, phrases twisted rather than turned. Clichés will loom before me, like serpents in my garden, begging to…
Check the Antifreeze: A Craft Annotation
Venturing into the wilderness at any point in life will have an impact on one's personality and lifestyle. It is always an adventure, and it is always dangerous. When Rick Bass and his then girlfriend Elizabeth rode their truck over a severely rutted road into the outback of northern Montana,…
Nouveau-riche Blue: A Craft Annotation
Whether painting for his reader a train's boxcar or a rare butterfly, Vladimir Nabokov handles the description with precision. He wields his weighty vocabulary like the sharpest of pencils and sketches every detail of the object in question. I could see the segmented panes of glass in the doors on…
The Stinging-Dry Song of Grasshoppers: A Craft Annotation
The cover of the current edition of Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is split down the middle by a vaguely tribal design, the title to the right and a black and white baby picture of the author on the left. Young Bobo Fuller's mouth is wide…