…I discover that Jim in Percival Everett’s retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is fully literate. He’s read Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke when he’s alone in Judge Thatcher’s library, and on Jacksons Island, after he gets bit by a rattlesnake, he has conversations with these literary and philosophical giants in fever-induced hallucinations, and isContinue reading “On the Twenty-ninth Day of 2025…”
Tag Archives: Fiction
On the Eighteenth Day of 2025…
…I have broken the record from January 2024 by writing eighteen days in a row toward the goal of blogging every day during the first month of the new year, attempting each day to string together a few hundred to a thousand words that form coherent sentences and ideas. I’ve tried to vary the shoeContinue reading “On the Eighteenth Day of 2025…”
It’s Dark In Here
In his entire history on the planet, he could recall only one day that felt darker than this one, and that was September 11, 2001. He could tell you without hesitation the three darkest days of his life in chronological order: 9/11; the first Trump victory in 2016; and then yesterday, the second Trump victoryContinue reading “It’s Dark In Here”
I’m Thinking About Giving Up on Writing Fiction on the Cusp of Another NANOWRIMO
In both Novembers of 2022 and 2023 I wrote 50,000 words for the National Novel Writing Month challenge. The results were two sloppy, hastily written rough drafts of novels. I would expect nothing less from such a challenge, the purpose of which is not to write a masterpiece, but to spill out as quickly asContinue reading “I’m Thinking About Giving Up on Writing Fiction on the Cusp of Another NANOWRIMO”
Gone So Long, I Been Gone So Long
Sorry about that. I mean, I realize no one has been holding their breath, so the apology is mostly self-talk, or self-writing, as I think I do this blogging activity more as a personal practice and discipline than anything else. I don’t mean to imply that I am not mightily grateful for the readers IContinue reading “Gone So Long, I Been Gone So Long”
Dispatches From Writer’s Camp: Reading What’s Not On The Page
I arrived at Mt. Holyoke College last night right in the middle of dinner after a long day of traveling. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning in order to get to the Portland airport by 5 to catch a plan by 6 to arrive in Chicago to hang out for a coupleContinue reading “Dispatches From Writer’s Camp: Reading What’s Not On The Page”
It’s April: National Poetry Writing Month!
Wasn’t it T.S. Eliot who wrote that April is the cruelest month? Of course it was; it’s the first line, and perhaps the most famous line* from The Wasteland. What’s so cruel about April, T.S. Eliot? He must have known something about National Poetry Writing Month. But there is something considerably less cruel in my estimationContinue reading “It’s April: National Poetry Writing Month!”
Combustion Deconstruction: Some Musings on the Fate of a First Novel
I started writing my first novel when I was, perhaps, 28 years old, I finished it coming out of an MFA program when I was 32, revised it when I was 35, began a long, demoralizing, tedious, and ultimately unsuccessful agent search, and then, when I was 40, I put the novel in the proverbialContinue reading “Combustion Deconstruction: Some Musings on the Fate of a First Novel”
Of Being Tired of Writing About Teaching
I think, at least for now, I’ve exhausted my brain and my “pen” regarding teaching, issues of public schooling, educational crisis, education reform. I know I will come back to it. It’s inevitable. But for the time being I feel like anything I have to say now will be a repeat of something I haveContinue reading “Of Being Tired of Writing About Teaching”
Monster Talk: Of a Race of Devils
Wherein Michael Jarmer reads an entire chapter from his novel in one take with only two negligible errors; wherein the author taxes the attention span and patience of his readers/watchers/listeners with a 12 minute video blog; wherein he learns never to do that again; wherein Michael Jarmer uses the natural lighting to freaky advantage; andContinue reading “Monster Talk: Of a Race of Devils”
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