Memoirous

As many of you know I am intrigued by the blurred line between fiction and non-fiction, between the truth, the whole truth and nothing but—and, well, a lie. I’ve always thought there should be a third way. And, maybe, I think I’ve found a secret door. In blogs past I’ve talked about black and white—and how for some of us it’s all gray. Religion especially. Or say the bones of St. James. My husband was having coffee with a friend, an iconographer, and mentioned that next year we were thinking of walking the El Camino trail in Spain which leads to Santiago, to a cathedral said to house the actual bones of St. James. Do you think, Mike asked his friend, those are really the bones of St. James? He answered that it didn’t matter what he thought, it only matters what the pilgrims think. Of course many walk the trail without an inkling of faith. For some it isn’t about belief but about the discipline. The walking toward something becomes secondary to simply walking. I like to quote An...

Okay not gone and not exactly sixty seconds, but close. One of my favorite ways to keep up on new calls for submissions and to organize the submission process is Duotrope duotrope.com which is delivered weekly to my inbox. It lets me know which literary journals have opened up for submissions, which have closed, and which are now kaput. AND at the bottom is a list of THEME issues. This list has been VERY good to me in the past. So messing around last Friday I saw there was a mag xalled Writer's Haven http://www.original-writer.com/writershaven.html where there was a call for pieces having to do with tranquility or peace. I had one! Composed last spring while on residency at Starry Night in T or C, NM. It was only 322 words, but hey! So I e-mailed it off and as I was still sitting at the computer I got a reply. Accepted! And it only took 6 minutes. Sorry if this sounds like bragging, because, it is. There is very little us writers have--except for random, scattered, not ofte...

There's nothing better than a BADDDD character. So engrossing, so intriguing. We kept watching just to see what she'd do next.

It’s a great feeling to get things all sorted out. Right now I feel like I’ve been on hyper-drive to get everything done. Maybe it is the fact that summer is nearly over and I haven’t had a single grill out at the lake, or maybe the fact that I work at the market 2 days a week in addition to getting up Mon- Fri @ 4:30 to cook breakfast for 300 people, or that I work 2 markets on Wednesday which means I’m on my feet for over 18 hours, on top of that I’m gone all day Thursday taking a class in Winnetka  with Fred Shafer here http://www.ocww.bizland.com/ . Time to write is getting squeezed, so that I have no more creative juice left. But, on the other hand, getting organized can have a soul-deadening effect. Once we no longer have to juggle contending thoughts or activities, once we have finally eliminated mounting tensions then . . . What? Keats coined a phrase called negative capability. In short negative capability is the ability to hold onto reality when it doesn’t fit any cat...

The inner city mission where I live and work is situated not too far from Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play. Maybe it was a friend of a friend or through the city or food depository, but our organization is one of a few invited to come about thirty minutes after the game to pick up unsold stadium hotdogs. So after every home game Chris and Stewart go in an old van to drive the one and half miles to Wrigley to load in a box (or two depending on the weather) of assorted grill items ie either a hot dog, hamburger, brat, or Italian sausage. The whole neighborhood gets a piece of this action. It’s a neighborhood comprised of homeless shelters, half-way houses, people pushing grocery carts down the alleys, and old Hungarian-looking women feeding pigeons next to signs saying Don’t Feed the Pigeons! Trash and bread and bagel debris swirl at corner curbs and once in a while a drunk sleeps one off on a bus bench. But about forty-five minutes even before a game is over, people start streaming...

Readers of this blog know that I am intrigued by the blurred line between fiction and non-fiction, the so-called lie and reality--which today has been skewed into scripted entertainment by reality TV--which leads us all to ask the question: What is real and what is not? Post real, I guess. So to make my point I'd like to cite 2 movies--one forthcoming and one released as a small independent--again I'm not a critic, only a helpful teacher trying to say: WRITE THE DAMN THING. This compulsion to ask yourself is this memoir, can I make it a story(?), I don't think is necessary in the draft stage. Yes, it's important, but only when you are discussing with your editor who the audience is, what your market may be, and where it gets shelved in the bookstore. Up to that point--see the above in bold caps. Lena Dunham is a young filmmaker and by young I mean UNDER 30. She graduated from Oberlin with the most economically competent degree known to mankind: the creative writin...

Today I'd like to do a couple of quick reviews of three memoirs. I'm not a REAL critic, but am always on the look-out for memoir material I can share with the classes and workshops I lead. The first book I have already used at the homeless shelter where I facilitate a creative writing program. The book is I REMEMBER by Joe Brainard . The concept is so simple, you're surprised more people haven't done it. The book first came out in 1970, fell out of print and is now back. It is 170 pages comprised of remembrances that begin I remember. For example I remember Payday candy bars and eating the nuts off first. I remember drawing pictures in church on pledge envelopes and programs . I remember rainy days through picture windows. I remember Peter Pan collars. I remember autumn. Many of the remembrances are banal, quotidian, of no significance--except that they are his. We often think, What do I have in common with others? Also many of us as artists also grew up feeling lik...

I'm passing this on from Vermont College of Fine Arts regarding author Kate Messner, who started a drive to help a tiny library in a poor area. ** I'd gone with my meteorologist husband to take photographs of flood damage in Essex County, just to our south. Roads were washed out, bridges closed or in pieces, familiar sights to anyone who's seen news coverage coming out of Vermont this week. But these tiny towns along Adirondack rivers haven't gotten much media attention. "Go on up ahead," one town supervisor told us from his pickup. "You need to see Upper Jay. It's awful." We made our way through roads that were down to one lane, and took detours when there was no road. As we drove around a bend in the road today, my husband slowed down. "Whoa…look at all the stuff in front of that house." But it wasn't a house. It was the library. They lost virtually their entire children's collection. All of the picture books...

I love working the market; I feel so in tune with the seasons. To the point where I actually experience grief when the strawberries are gone or the last of the cherries have left us. I welcome the plums and feel relief when the peaches finally arrive, because for weeks now the customers have been asking about them, some even becoming upset when we’ve had to inform them it could be a few more weeks—as if I am to blame for a cold, prolonged spring. That’s why we got into the habit of giving them a progress report, weekly updates on how the peaches were coming along, our way of saying Hang in there! Then the peaches ripened, were picked, and brought to market. I was so excited to be able to finally shout out: the peaches are here. Come and experience greatness, taste our pretty samples. Your waiting is over. All your dreams and desires have been fulfilled—only to have our customers rush to the counter and ask for—nectarines. They hardly even acknowledge the blush, the golden glow of ...