In a previous blog, I announced to everyone that my novel Seiji was finished. It was. Problem was it had not yet been given to an editor (though it had been shared with friends, whose responses were quite a bit less than, erm, "enthused" about it. After giving it to my editor here in Sapporo, Derek Chamberlain, I discovered that I had (and have) a lot of work to do to make Seiji the great story I want it to be. Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets and novelists. Here is what she has t...

Continue reading ...

What makes a story a short story?

The most effective -- and creepiest -- short story I have ever read was a page and a half long in a paperback “pocket” book that I read back in 1954 or 55. I don’t recall the author’s name, but I do recall the story in every chilling detail. Set in the parking lot of a hospital at the end of her 3 - 11 shift, a nurse was getting into her car when a criminally insane patient she knew came up to her, killed her and ... well, you can imagine how the r...

Continue reading ...

It's been a year and a half since I typed the first word. This morning at around 8AM I finished my first edit. In a week I'll do another go through and make changes, then it's off to the publisher after the first of the year. What a feeling, and what an adventure it has been! 

And then what? Could be the book about Mexico City ("The City Has Many Faces"), but is likely to be something else that I'll have more to say about later. Other than writing book reviews, mapping out the next book and re...
Continue reading ...

Here we are already halfway through October, and I haven't posted a thing since August 29th. Part of my lapse was being out with a cold for 9 days, then needing to get out of the condo to get some badly needed exercise. Well, now I'm back, within a day or so of  having my "Seiji" novel finished (1st draft), then on to editing it and sending it off to a publisher. When that is done, I think I'll take my first month off from writing in about three years. I should; I have plenty of reading to do...
Continue reading ...

“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...

Continue reading ...

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...
Continue reading ...

I love to write; I don't always enjoy editing. Writing is creative and fun; editing too often seems like work. It's a matter of you we look at it.

I remember seeing my mother standing in front of her easel with a paintbrush poised, thinking. She'd add a bit of color here, remove something there, change something else. Finally satisfied, she would pronounce the painting finished. To her, "editing" was a part of the creative process. Most of the time I view it the same way. But it isn't always "...
Continue reading ...

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...
Continue reading ...

Parking

New writing projects pop into my head fairly often, especially when my brain is in “create” mode. I may be riding along on the subway, eating, talking with my wife or a friend, just waking up (happened this morning), overhear someone talking, or have an idea or image nag away at me until I do something about it. If any of the ideas begi...

Continue reading ...

Writing, for me, is a love affair. Rewriting is what makes the love affair with a writing project blossom. To a painter, rewriting is like looking at a painting and adding a bit of color here, additional brush strokes there, sometimes adding something in ... or removing something that doesn't fit. I saw my mother, who was a painter, standing in front of her easel with a brush in one hand, looking at the painting she was working on, making the necessary changes.

But rewriting isn't always fun. ...
Continue reading ...

For me, the characters are what create stories, plots appear as the story moves along. I know that's backwards for many writers, and I know I'm not the only one who writes the way I do. Teresa Geering, author of the popular The Eye of Erasmus writes the way I do, beginning with character.

If I lose sight of the character (who he or she is), then I lose sight of the story, and it stops. I've recently had that experience and had to take a break from the story until I caught a clear vision of who...
Continue reading ...

If you've been reading my blog, you know I attach a lot of importance to characters and character development to telling a good story. Click on the following link to read a wonderful article by MG Harris, author of the acclaimed series "The Joshua Files". If you're a writer, you'll want this one for your library.

http://www.mgharris.net/2010/04/24/motivating-your-characters-the-key-to-success-zero-moment-blog-tour-7/

Continue reading ...

... it will replenish itself if you relax and don't panic.

I recently hit a "flat" place while working on chapter 5 in my novel about Seiji, the Asakusa Tokyo artist. He had just arrived in Princeton, New Jersey to visit old friends David and Noriko Sakamoto, and I got stuck. I felt tired,deleted, and wanted nothing so much as to go to sleep.

"Hmmm," I said; "wonder if we're both suffering a little jet lag and culture shock?" We were (at least I was, culture shock that is). He'd never visited t...
Continue reading ...

Where do stories, poems and novels come from? Do they come from an outline and a plan? Sometimes, and for some writers, most or all of the time. When you begin a project, should you stay with it (a novel, say) before moving on to something else? Again, this seems to depend on the writer and the way his or her imagination works. Haruki Murakami, for instance, shifts from writing a novel to writing short stories to writing another novel, then back again.

For me the process is somewhat diffe...

Continue reading ...

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, ...
Continue reading ...

No, this isn't a travel article, it's about the few months I spent in Mexico City in 1973-74 and how I was captivated by the city. It's also the title of a poem that I wrote for my son Michael back in 1974 that was published in the magazine "Valley Views, in Chagrin Falls, Ohio later that year, about which a friend recently said "You really fell in love with Mexico City, didn't you?" Oh boy, did I ever! I am now in the middle of writing a novel about it, called "The City Has Many Faces". But ...
Continue reading ...

As I said in a previous post, I came to writing poetry mostly by accident, when a key flew off my typewriter in the midst of a writing project. For most writing, I am typing-dependent,which meant that I pushed the project I was working on aside and wrote the following poem after coming in from a walk in my Minneapolis neighborhood.

A Song

to be sung softly in the morning or before going

to bed, to the accompaniment of a flute and an

ancient stringed instrument.

Night-coming son

moon r...

Continue reading ...

Listening to stories is something we learn as children. To a writer, listening is vital, because stories are 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 years by listening, asking clarifying questions when appropriate, and allowing the person to tell his or her story as I sit and listen. Some years ago I wrote and published “Requiem for Blue”, a story about an ex-convict who had spent 30 years in priso...

Continue reading ...

Why compassion? It boils down to this: Without compassion writing, like all human communication, devolves into dismissiveness, attack and put-down, all of which are disconnecting, and ultimately dehumanizing. I do not like writing that treats human beings and the world they live in, as things to be manipulated, played with and destroyed. Psychologically speaking, a person who does that is called a sociopath, a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of m...

Continue reading ...

I recently ran across a quote that perfectly describes my experience with writing short stories and working on a novel, both of which I am doing. The quote is from novelist and short story writer Haruki Murakami, and is in the Introduction to the English edition of his short story collection "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman".

"To put it in the simplest possible terms," he writes, "I find writing novels a challenge, writing short stories a joy. If writing  novels is like planting a forest, then wr...
Continue reading ...

When a friend asked me the other day what role humility plays in creating art, I responded that I think it plays an important role. But when I looked the word up in several dictionaries, I found the definitions less than satisfying: “The defining characteristic of an unpretentious and modest person, someone who does not think that he or she is better or more important than others.” Others are: “Modesty, lacking pretense, not believing that you are superior to others,” and “Shifting...

Continue reading ...

When I write a poem, it is a way of seeing and distilling what I see in the simplest, clearest and most expressive way possible. When I write a story or a novel, I can be as expansive as I want, but when I write a poem, I try to boil it all down. Not all poets do that. Nikos Kazantzakis, the great Greek-Cretan novelist and poet, wrote "The Odyssey, a Modern Sequel" in the form of a poem, 824 pages long! The language and imagery are incredibly rich. I recall reading it nearly forty years ago a...
Continue reading ...

The simplest answer is to begin and never stop, because it's in writing that we develop our skills. The problem with many "wannabees" is quitting the minute discouragement arrives, and just like the next hour and the next day, it will arrive.

What's the best way to guard against being defeated by discouragement? Read books by great writers. And read about them. In the early days, I read everything I could lay my hands on about well-known writers and their experience. I bought every single issu...
Continue reading ...

Kokopelli has always been one of my favorite images. He celebrates, he dances, he is playful, and he gets me to seeing and exploring things I wouldn't ordinarily see and explore. Whenever I hear his whistle, I've learned to follow it.

This image is from a painting by my good friend Paul Bauck, and I treasure it. Paul was kind enough to gift me with a digital image of it before we left Seattle for Sapporo, Japan a little less than a year ago.



Continue reading ...

Continue reading ...

This ahuehuete tree is one of my "muses". It represents great age (it is over 1,000 years old), myth, shamanic reality, struggle, history, creation itself. The first time I saw it, I was stopped in my tracks, stunned by its immense size, looking like a mountain in an ancient Chinese painting. The Aztec king, Moctezuma (misspelled "Montezuma" in American English) played at its feet when he was a boy. Ahuehuete trees (Mexican cypress) grow to immense size and age. The one in Tulun, in the squar...
Continue reading ...