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Writing Feeds My Soul

December 20, 2020
Tags: writing, authors

The writer relaxing at Sea Ranch,

2019. Photo by Carole Johnson

 

Writing, for me, is pure: totally involving, pleasurable, existing only for itself, not the end product. In the same way I cherish hiking a trail in the woods early morning, eager to see cottontail rabbits leaping into the brush, or the joy I get pulling weeds in my flower garden--where the aromas of leaves and fresh dirt fill my nostrils--writing is an activity that fully absorbs me. When I finish, I'm flushed with pleasure.


Of course I learn a great deal about myself during the process: writing is a minute examination of some facet of living, subjecting it to the microscope. But while that is useful, it is the mental act of creating sentences and paragraphs or musing over structure that fills my heart with joy. I am a great rewriter, believing each revision only improves the draft; my heart lifts as each sentence receives its polish. Or even when I ruthlessly cut out phrases or larger chunks of writing. Read More 

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The First Sentence

August 11, 2019
Tags: writing, structure, Theme

“The opening sentence should be like an arrow shot from a bow: it will shoot through the entire text.” The late biographer Henry Mayer, a generous man, once gave me this advice. I’d approached him after a reading for his biography of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and when I asked him a question he offered to meet me for coffee.

Just beginning my own biography of civil rights icon Eleanor Holmes Norton, I was floundering, awash in data. Already I’d interviewed a dozen of her colleagues and family, pored through dusty boxes of newspaper clippings and legal briefs.  Read More 

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What Keeps You From Writing?

May 7, 2019
Tags: writing, procrastination, women writing, writer's block

Did you plan to start on that new writing project yesterday, but then discover that your oven needed cleaning—urgently? You simply couldn’t stand the flaky grime one more day. Or the phone rang just as you sat down to begin and two hours later you realized you allowed yourself to get caught  Read More 

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The Spice in Your Writing

May 1, 2019
Tags: writing, editing

The details you use to ground your writing are like the spices you sprinkle on your food. They give it life and make it uniquely your own. When I cook petrale sole it’s too bland unless I splash ginger powder, garlic, and red pepper into the pan. Sometime I sauté a green onion,  Read More 

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Middle of the book: Keep energy up!

May 1, 2019
Tags: writing, editing, Endings, Women Authors, women writing

I’ve read books that start so well I think contentedly, Ah, this one I’m going to like; but fifty or seventy-five pages in the prose goes flat, the plot grows confusing or boring, and I close the book in disappointment.

Yet as a writer I understand: it’s easy to bog down  Read More 

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CIRCULAR NARRATIVE

April 5, 2017
Tags: writing, storytelling, circles in narrative, ancient art form

I love circles, especially in writing, where the author cycles back at the end of an essay or book to a reference from the opening. Joseph Campell’s book The Hero With a Thousand Faces defined this pattern in drama, myth, and religious ritual: a protagonist, forced from home, leaves the ordinary world to  Read More 

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The Joy of Writing

December 4, 2014
Tags: writing, novelist
In honor of National Novel Writing Month, Webucator Bob Clary asked me for an online interview. As a committed novelist, I was happy to oblige.

Q: What were your goals when you started writing?

I wanted to contribute to a national conversation—especially about race and gender equity. As a white woman who’d been married to an African American man and as the mother of biracial children, I had a perspective I hoped might provide a bridge for white people.
And I loved the mere act of writing, playing with words, creating well-crafted sentences. During the busy years of child-raising, two jobs, and night school, I found little time for formal writing. But late at night I poured my desires and frustrations into a journal, which exercised the writing muscle. Sometimes I experimented with poetry, and always read voraciously.  Read More 
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The Great March for Jobs and Freedom, 1963

August 27, 2013
Tags: March on Washington 1963, writing, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Fire in My Soul, Mama's Child
(Blog first posted on Women Writers, Women Books site)

I’d bought the car at a police auction for $25. You could do that then in New York City: ride the subway to some out-of-the-way lot full of junked cars, make a bid, and the next day, the car might  Read More 
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On Writing and Not Writing

August 22, 2013
Tags: writing, not writing, work/life balance, writing life, Meg Waite Clayton
There actually is a difference. As an author and columnist who’s been steadily writing, nearly daily, for twenty years, in the last few months I’ve become “a writer who emails, and writes on the side,” as my colleague Meg Waite Clayton says. Promotion for Mama’s Child has spawned endless emails: details  Read More 
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Creating Fictional Characters

June 14, 2013
Tags: writing, fiction, character development
Creating fictional characters is one of the most mysterious aspects of the enigmatic activity we call creative writing. Here I sit, the author of a novel, imagining beings who have never really lived. Often they are composites of many people I’ve known, fused with bits of my own experience or personality; but ultimately they become their own people, whose voices I hear.  Read More 
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It's True: I Love to Write

May 21, 2013
Tags: writing, spiritual joy, authors, writing process
"What, another book already?" friends exclaim. "You must be so disciplined." They shake their heads in disbelief.

Well, no, not really. The fact is that I love to write. Shaping each sentence, piling them up one upon another in a logical sequence, creating a clear beginning, middle, and end--all these activities fill me with  Read More 
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The Oddity of the Writing Profession

May 11, 2013
Tags: writers, authors, writing, publishing
Being a full-time writer is a strange occupation. I work all day alone in a tiny cottage behind my house, hunched over my computer, lost in an imaginary world. If I weren't producing coherent literature, some might consider this behavior peculiar, at best--or worthy of psychiatric intervention.

Even at night my characters follow me,  Read More 
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