Sometimes writing is hard—very hard. The words don’t flow with ease and pages pile up and are trashed with each false start. And then there are times when the words leap out of me and land neatly arranged in paragraphs. Writing is writing—whether it’s my freelance work or my fiction, the actual process of writing, of pouring the words from one container (my head) into another container (the page) is the same. There’s one phenomenon that I experience, but have never tried to talk about or blog about before, and that’s the sensation of words burning a hole in my
Read More
Inspiring Hatred
I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of person capable of inspiring murderous hatred, but now I’ve come to a radical conclusion. The more I learn about the world, the less confident I become in the basic goodness of people. There are simply individuals so beyond the pale, that nothing rational scratches the surface of their worldview. That’s how ordinary, basically nice, respectable people find themselves at the receiving of vitriol and even violence. Having been a painfully shy child and adolescent, I was never Miss Popularity. I always had friends—good friends—and my friends have always been drawn from
Read More
The Word of a Liar
I’m fond of the unreliable narrator. It’s a point-of-view that invites the reader to judge the validity of what one character tells another, and what the author—in a character’s voice—tells the reader. Do we take the word of a liar? Often. A while back I found myself in an intense conversation with my friend’s precocious son. He was 12 or 13 and he brought up Nabokov’s ‘Lolita.’ At the time he was a budding, classic movie buff, and now—at nearly 18—he is a full-fledged authority on FILM. But back then, as we waited for pizza to arrive, he told me
Read More
Speak, Talk, Chat, Explain
The English language has many words with similar—if not the same—definitions. If you look up ‘speak,’ ‘talk’ will be the first synonym, but is it really the same? No. Speaking is gentler and more erudite. “We were speaking about language and it all began to sound like poetry… We were talking and we all started to laugh…” ‘Talking’ is both more casual and stronger. “We have to talk about this” is not the start of an easy conversation. My role as a Conversation partner/tutor in an English-as-a-Second-Language program often pushes me to explain the subtle differences in word usage. Having
Read More
The OTHER Protagonist
Do I think there should be more than one protagonist in a story? Not as such. I just think that in many of my favorite works of literature the location is a principal character in the story and is often as important as the protagonist in moving the action along. Some of these locations are obvious. Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s mysterious novel ‘Rebecca’ is more than the setting. It IS a character as much as any of the people in the story—both living and dead. The house, haunted by the memory of its first mistress, is the star of
Read More
I’m Back!
What a trip! I went under a waterfall (it felt like a fire house of water in my face); I made friends with butterflies; visited a spooky ‘city of the dead’ (the famous cemetery in Recoleta, Buenos Aires; I danced Tango, drank wine & ate more steak in 16 days that I normally eat in a year…. And now, I’m back home. During my trip I drafted four short stories and came up with some new ideas yet to be explored. I had one whopper of a nightmare, so scary that when I recounted it, it seemed like the opening
Read More
Nature Nurturing the City Writer
I’m not a nature girl and that’s reflected in my fiction, but… I’m here the the Iquazu Falls in Argentina, walking through the forest, making friends with butterflies, taking a boat ride under the Falls (it felt like a fire hose was unleashed on my face), spotting exotic birds, dodging the presence of some crazy creatures, and… WRITING. Yes, even this urban writer gets inspired by nature. Look for short stories and blog posts with new and greener settings in the near future. Now, it’s almost time to get back to the Falls!
Read More
