I’ve been mulling over a Zen story about a farmer whose horse ran away. “Such bad luck!” his neighbors said. “Maybe,” the farmer replied. Then the horse returned, accompanied by two wild horses. “So fortunate!” the neighbors said. “Maybe,” said the farmer. Later, the farmer’s son tried to ride a wild horse, was thrown off, […]
As I move to the close of my second decade of teaching creative writing, I’m experiencing a dramatic shift in my philosophy. Writing has always been for me a means of personal discovery; I came to understand and claim my identity as a bisexual Christian when writing Swinging on the Garden Gate, and then melded
Writing from Deep Gladness to the World’s Deep Hunger Read More »
A friend explained to me yesterday why she, a born-and-bred Catholic, is faithfully attending adult education classes at her UCC church, asking hard questions, giving the pastor blunt answers, and otherwise being a rabble-rouser. “I want to know what I believe before I die,” she said. “I don’t want simply to fall back on what
I can’t tell you how often I read early drafts of memoirs that are thorough, lively recordings of events, great for preserving family history but absolutely unsatisfying as memoirs. First this happened, and then this, and then this… Even when the events are shocking, amazing, horrific, terrifying, or otherwise scintillating, the drafts read like flat
Giving Your Story a Plot Read More »
From the moment her eyes pop open in the morning until that instant of surrender at night, Gwyn emits a steady stream of imaginative possibilities. “What if I’m a hermit crab? How about we live on the beach? How about you’re my crab mom? What if I have a shell? A shell, Mama—we have to
Whutif and Howbout Read More »
Sorry, folks. I’m too busy to write a Faith Finder article this month. I could give you all sorts of explanations—the 8 a.m. phone call with Gwyn’s teacher, the hassle of bundling her off to school, the disaster I’m ignoring in the kitchen, my crazy to-do list—but ultimately the problem is internal. Jangled nerves. Thoughts
(This blog post is reprinted after appearing in The Loft’s “Writer’s Block.”) “I’m not interested in spiritual stuff. I just want to write stories.” A friend—a thoughtful, church-going friend—said this to me in passing the other day. Since she couldn’t hear my internal temper-tantrum, I’ll give it here: What in tarnation is more spiritual than
Four Excuses Not to Write Spiritual Memoir, and One Invitation Read More »
Gwyn’s sick, which means two nights of interrupted sleep. This morning she arrives in our dark bedroom wanting to play. I don’t. She curls up at my feet, right where the cat sleeps, and lays still for five minutes. Snow has dusted the earth. It falls all morning in trace amounts, miniscule white thoughts moving
Ten Glimpses of God in Five Hours Read More »
The real subject of autobiography is not one’s experience but one’s consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool. –Patricia Hampl Perhaps because I’m entering my twenty-third year of teaching writing, I’m getting curmudgeonly about memoir. I still revere fine examples in the genre, but the vast majority of memoir seems myopic and disengaged. Published
Windows onto a Wider World Read More »
The other evening I taught a lesson at the Loft that was meant to help beginning memoirists distinguish between the character and the narrator in their stories. We create personas for ourselves on the page; the main character in every memoir is the younger self who experiences and is changed by events; we can also
The Journey from Self-Conscious to Aware Read More »