Memoirous

Here is something you should submit to: Call For Submissions: Hemingway Shorts The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park is pleased to announce a new and exciting venture which seeks to promote new creative writing, and is designed especially to capture new voices engaged in the creative writing process, in fiction. The series called HEMINGWAY SHORTS seeks to utilize impetus from the famous author toward sparking energized new interest in the writing craft, and, most importantly, to open the process to entirely new writers, especially those who have never before thought they might write publishable pieces of work. Help will be provided new authors in shaping their work for entry into this new and exciting venture. Since this publication dovetails with the International Hemingway conference being held in Oak Park this year, it is hoped that attendees will be encouraged to submit work. Submission Guidelines: Each applicant must submit their work electronically throug...

There is so much to frustrate us these days. So much anger out there. Sometimes I think it is propelling us forward—toward an abyss. When I was out cycling this fall doing the Greater Alleghany Passage and the C & O Towpath (Pittsburgh to Washington DC) I was pretty much camping by myself every night except for one. At a hiker/biker pull off approx 45 miles from DC Larry was also unloading and setting up. This was a great spot by the Potomac—except for the active rail line next to our campsite. All night long it felt like a commuter train was running through my dreams. Larry was on a vision quest. Needing more clarity in his life, he left a great job and family to clear his head. He might also have been tottering on the edge of a divorce and breakdown. For him he needed a clean break, and cycling across America was hopefully the answer. I totally get this. When on my bike and bike trips there is absolutely no parallel to my “normal” life. So much so that my thought proc...

www.candacecasey.com/ Ghost House Robert Frost , 1874 - 1963 I dwell in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago,    And left no trace but the cellar walls,    And a cellar in which the daylight falls And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.   O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield The woods come back to the mowing field;    The orchard tree has grown one copse    Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops; The footpath down to the well is healed.   I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart    On that disused and forgotten road    That has no dust-bath now for the toad. Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;   The whippoorwill is coming to shout And hush and cluck and flutter about:    I hear him begin far enough away    Full many a time to say hi...

Remembering the Old Main Library of Cincinnati I remember walking into a library as if entering a sacred place, the high ceilings my cathedral. Scanning those tall shelves was like coming forward and kneeling at an altar. Libraries saved my life. I couldn’t get enough of books—until I visited a library and came to understand that I wouldn’t ever have enough time for all the books I wanted to read. I must’ve had to convince my father to drive me to the Kettering Library a couple times a month. Can you imagine! I couldn’t download or read online. There was no other way to gratify my pernicious itch to read except by going to a library—and for that I needed an adult. Until a branch was built JUST DOWN THE STREET. Yay! The only drawback was I had to wait until they opened. There were nights when I made lists of all the titles I’d search the card catalog for or subjects I wanted to research. I know I’d take my library card right up to the limit. It was only in readin...

A feature of this blog is Places to Submit (flash). Themed issues are a good way to work on material, either new material or something in the drawer you can take out and dust off and breathe new life into. Some of my pieces might make a round of journals without ever finding a home when suddenly because of a particular theme there is new interest. Once I submitted a flash for a newish journal called The Blue Hour. The theme was somewhat nebulous, more like a feeling. I sent over an untitled flash and BAM accepted. I wrote back: That was quick! And the editor said, I know it when I see it. Sometimes all it takes is the right time and the right place for a piece that has been collecting dust to suddenly become relevant. Here is a list of places with calls for submissions, themed submissions. The Pedestal , flash: The Working Life, May 2 – May 29 <1000 words Fiction: Studs Terkel's 1974 classic Working is 42 years old this year. For the June 2016 issue of Pede...

Fates and Furies , Lauren Groff Hausfrau , Jill Alexander Essbaum I Want to Show You More, Jamie Quatro Lately I’ve seen these 3 titles grouped together. Possibly because they released around the same time, but I think for another reason. The main characters, females, are sexually bold. Perhaps coming on the heels of 50 Shades of Grey, reviewers have clumped these titles. Okay, so we already know that women can have sex and that many actually do. We also have heard rumors that they like it. So none of this should be a surprise. But, the fact that these books released around the same time perhaps made it seem like a phenomena. The main characters do not shy away from sex—yet there is, lingering around the fuzzy edges, fear. Fear that it might not be enough. Definitely Essbaum’s Anna (often compared to Emma in Madame Bovary) begins to come unhinged. She has a husband, she has a lover, and she has flings, quickies in the backyard. Etc. Yet she is unhappy, unsa...

I just received my first fan mail from a blog reader! To say I was confused was an understatement. Yet OVERJOYED at the same time. I had to think—who do I know in Maine? I host quite a few travelers through couchsurfing—who did I recently meet who was traveling onto Maine (in the winter!)? No one. Then I turned the card over and read the words “I love your blog.” I think Lynne might be referring to some posts I put up a few weeks back that encouraged readers to sit down and write a postcard. Often the bigger picture can be overwhelming. Sometimes we need to trick ourselves into writing. All we have to do is fill this one tiny space.  Lately I’ve been talking about Fifty-Word Stories (bite size fiction everyday). The back of a postcard is perfect for limiting yourself to 50 words. The front of the card can actually serve as inspiration. If the idea of story is overwhelming—(how can one have a beginning, middle and end when working with only 50 words???)—try th...

Though not technically a flash prompt, today in a few paragraphs I would like to impart ways to work inside or “get” ideas for writing. I’ve written here in past posts about googling images from the World Wide Web. Usually that is after I’ve written something and need something in which to illustrate my ideas/opinions/feelings.  Here are a few techniques I use to get ideas or get inside in order to write. Images are a huge part of the process. My imagination is ignited by expanding my view. The window by my writing desk only allows me to see so much. So lately I’ve been using: Just Breathe Here is a way to travel without ever leaving your chair—and possibly feel really good about yourself. Just Breathe is a group site at Facebook. Not sure exactly who is behind it, but it comes together much like the proverb It Takes a Village. The photos are not hers. They are sourced from contributors and possibly—guess who?—the World Wide Web. Lisa Simone? Is that is actual...

I wrote a couple days ago about the Book Box/Shake, Rattle, and Read and how they got me through the hard times here in Uptown. Today I’m going to write about “the one that got away.” We all have stories like these. For example once my husband and I were traveling and stopped in Wooster, Ohio at a used bookstore where he came upon a signed book by G. K. Chesteron. But who had $100 when we were intentionally avoiding the toll road because of the tolls! Still, he brings it up sometimes like an old war wound that has never healed. It galls him, the one that got away. My story is similar. After moving to Chicago in 1982 I was living and volunteering among the poor. Definitely funds were scarce, but I always enjoyed browsing the bookstore. It was in fact my lifeline. One afternoon I was in there and stumbled upon a title about the Arctic. I’ve always loved stories about the North and South Pole. Usually they involve eating dogs on some barren wind-swept ice plateau or figh...

    I’ve lived in Uptown in Chicago for 34 years—and that whole time there has been a little used bookstore down the street at Lawrence and Broadway. First it was the Book Box and then it changed its name to Shake, Rattle, and Read. Along with books there was a wide assortment of used vinyl. The current owner Ric Addy will never know what a godsend his shop has been to me through the years. Readers of this blog will have already picked up that books have saved my life. Reading has been my constant companion even before I could read. As a pre-reader I begged for the same books to be read to me over and over. I connected with story. As miserable as the Uptown neighborhood appeared to me in the early 80s it was only bearable because of the Book Box. I’d go there with empty pockets, just to browse. That’s all I could afford. Still it was enough to stand there in that environment and breathe in words, musty yellowed pages of them, pulp fiction covers, ...

What would you do with a dune shack? From Building Provincetown, the Book by by David W. Dunlap Cape Cod National Seashore | Thalassa (Shack 14) Thalassa (θαλασσα) is the primal spirit of the sea and the name Hazel Hawthorne Werner gave to the smaller of her dune cottages. It was built in 1931 by the coast guardsmen, and brothers, Louis “Spucky” Silva and Frank Silva, who salvaged its windows from Eugene O’Neill’s life-saving station, gave it a front porch, and called it Seagoin’. They sold it to Werner in 1936. Her guests included E. E. Cummings, Norman Mailer and Edmund Wilson. It was here in 1996 that David Forest Thompson was first captivated by shack life. He went on to publish a delightful book of his paintings, Dune Shacks . Other artists and writers who have stayed here are Tabitha Vevers; her husband, Daniel Ranalli; and Allen Young. Thalassa has been managed since 2000 by the Peaked Hill Trust. In May 2012 I spent a one-week residency at a dune shack at the Cap...

On Sunday nights I meet with a group of artists, all of us working from different backgrounds ie the visual arts, media, dance, music, cross-over hybrids. There is nevertheless a lot of commonality between us. Most of the conversation is esoteric ie where does art come from, what makes it art, what if we don’t ever have an audience—are we still legit? The question of authenticity is one we keep coming back to. Last night I talked about using prompts or challenges to help keep the work fresh. We can all get into a rut or become blocked because whatever it is we think we need to create might nor be happening. Lately I’ve also been thinking about that Dune Shack I spent a week in back in May 2012. There were a lot of restriction that went with that residency. Number 1: no electricity. I didn’t even bother bringing a laptop or another kind of device because I anticipated a kind of panic watching the battery symbol drain down to a crisis red. Instead I brought several n...

Evolution/Uptown 1980s: The guy walking down the street talking to himself 2000s: The guy walking down the street talking into his cell phone 2010s The guy walking down the street pretending to talk on his cell