The other day a writer friend showed me a simple formula for writing a story, or a novel by filling in the blank spaces in a sentence: "When a [     ] [     ] is dragged into [    ] s/he is forced to [    ] in order to [    ]." Character, situation, conflict and story are all set down in those simple steps.

Looking at it, I was reminded of a writing assignment my youngest son had when he was eight years old. He and his classmates were required to fill in the blanks in the following sentence: "...
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One of the things that enchants me about writing, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is the way surprises pop up. Recently, on the fifth edit and rewrite of my novel "The City Has Many Faces", a novel about Mexico City, I headed into a chapter and almost immediately got bored. That is a huge signal to me that I'm not paying attention to the main character and allowing him or her to guide me. The trouble here was that I included an element in the story that fit another context, but not in thi...
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The ancient bird

We were in the midst of one of those late winter storms that Minnesota has when I saw him. It was one of those storms that dumps heavy, wet snow and blows it around in blasts of icy needles that sting your face and takes your breath away. As I stepped out through the door of the hospital where I work, the wind lunged at me, and I set off running for the bus shelter with one hand on my hat and the other gripping my briefcase. My face burned from the cold. Behind me the big fl...

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Beginning with this post, I'll be posting much more frequently, sharing poems, comments on writing, reviews of books I've been reading, and writing about the art and process of writing as I experience and practice it. The two  poems posted today are my own. The first on was inspired by the song “Don’t worry about a thing”, from the DVD/music album from Playing for Change, “PFC 2 – Songs Around The World”.
 

Celebration

 

If I have life to live

over again,

I will learn music.

I will ...

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This was first published in the August, 2009 edition of The View From Here Literary Magazine. 

Listening to stories is something we learn as children. To a writer, listening is vital, because stories are everywhere, free for the taking when we take the time to listen for and to them. 

It's amazing to me what I've learned over the year by listening, asking clarifying questions when appropriate, and allowing the person to ell his or her story as i sit and listen. Some years ago I wrote and publis...
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I wrote this for "The Creatively Green Write at Home Mom" blog, which was published on December 12th. It's an important subject to me, as I remember my novice attempts all too well. Some of them were really awful, but I sent them out anyway with a self-dadressed stamped envelope -- SASE -- attached, & got them back thankfully without comment. It's something all writers have to do at first. I think you'll  enjoy the article, which you'll find by clicking the link or copying it and pasting it i...
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The most valuable thing I’ve learned about writing about a character is to listen to what the character has to tell me. In my first published story (“Jonah’s Birth”, The North Dakota Review, Autumn 1971) I let Jonah lead me where he wanted to go after being vomited up by the whale. It’s a technique I learned in my years as a mental health counselor: Ask people why they are there, then listen as they tell me their story. When I do that, everything falls together; when I don’t, it d...

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If you're wondering what's happened to me in all these months, I took some time away from writing, and in the past month or so have been buried in a new project or two. I've written some very short poems in June, and here they are:

 

Poem

The days move

swiftly by

while the nights move slowly

and are filled with dreams.

--Sapporo, 25 June 2012

Celebration

The day, the day!

What a joy it is!

-- Sapporo,  26 June

To cause pain ...

To cause pain

in a child ...

What beastliness!

...
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Sex, sexuality and sexual explicitness have long been controversial in the United States, where the attitude has traditionally been repressive and deeply laden with sexual guilt. Prior to the mid-1960s, sexually explicit books like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer were banned, copies confiscated, and booksellers intimidated for selling them even after the ban was lifted in 1961. It wasn’t until 1964 that the US Supreme Court declared Miller’s book not to be obscene and its sale protected...

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The other day while waiting for the bus on a beautiful, cold, sunny afternoon, snowflakes began to fall. I composed this little poem in my head, then wrote it down in my notebook afar taking my seat. Poems often come to me this way.


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“What are you doing, son?” the American soldier with the Japanese face asks.

“Drawing.” Seiji holds up a scrap of cardboard on which he has drawn a picture of his old neighborhood before Tokyo was firebombed and his neighborhood erased.

“Nice work!” the soldier says in Japanese. He squats down to have a closer look. “Is that all you have to draw on?”

“Mmmm, I found it over there.” He aims a charcoal-begrimed finger at a nearby trash heap next to the concrete remains of wha...

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My apologies for being tardy with posting on my blog. The main problem has been my laptop which is on its last legs and too unreliable to use. So I bought an iMac and found myself, as an old Windows user, beginning a new learning experience. It's been a challenge, and a happy one. I now have things figured out sufficiently to get back to my novel, book reviewing an blogging.

Now for the subject of reviewing books, something I've done in tandem with writing poetry and fiction since the early 19...
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Since it was a beautiful, sunny day, grandfather decided to walk along the Motsukisamu River, which was near the condominium where he and grandmother lived.

As he was leaving, grandmother said: “Now, you be careful of those dogs that run around there, because they bark, and they've been known to bite, especially one of them. That little monster is a vicious little gray devil with very sharp teeth, who has b...

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The next day when grandfather went out for a walk, the raven didn't appear until he was a good fifteen minutes into his walk and had stopped to admire a little league baseball game that was going on in a nearby park. As he stood there, he heard the sound of a creaking hinge coming from a nearby bush. Turning his head toward the sound, he saw a large raven sitting atop the bush, looking at him.

 “Is that you?” he as...

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Over the next few weeks or so I'm going to dropping some of the stories in my book Grandfather and the Raven. This is the first story one. The book, which is available in paperback and Kindle, is published by Night Publishing (UK). I think you will enjoy the stories.

One morning while grandfather was out walking, a big raven flew down and lit in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. “Kaaaaaa! ” the raven said. Then,...

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This is a story about Grandfather and a deer that predates Grandfather's meeting Sir Raven, his big raven friend. Set on the farm of Grandfather's brother, it is a poignant story of compassion and recovery.

Grandfather and the Deer

 

One

 

 

          One morning when grandfather and grandmother were visiting his younger brother on the family farm, grandfather looked out the window and said:

          “Look, broth...

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Call it writer's block or hitting a roadblock, getting there happens to all writers. It happened to me three or four days ago after sailing along smoothly in my novel about Tokyo artist Seiji. Reaching a scene change, I was stuck, up-to-the-hubcaps in mud, dead battery dead. Stared at the blank space and couldn't think of a thing. Nada.

Then this morning I made a startlingly simple discovery: I was trying to remember something I had deleted ... a bit of scenery from the new chapter, but it wou...
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What struck me most reading George Polley’s books, Grandfather and the Raven and The Old Man and the Monkey are their ability to relocate the reader geographically without dislocating him culturally or intellectually. The place is maybe Japan but the moral of the stories are to be applied everywhere, and on everyone.

My children read both books and enjoyed them immensely. They appreciated the sense of adventure, readability and the uniqueness of the style. I appreciated their subtle moral...

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It's often called "writer's block" -- you know, when you're sitting there in front of a blank screen or sheet of paper and your mind is blank ... for days. I call it "when the well runs dry,. because that's the way it feels. I've used too much of the "water" in it, it's dry, and I have to wait until the spring replenishes it before I can write again. It's a wake up call for me to sit back, relax, and let the well replenish, which it always does.

This happens to all writers. I use it to relax, ...
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