All right then. I get it. The San Souci Motel is called the San Soo-chee, not the Sahn Soo-cee. People in Buckroe Beach, Virginia, do not go in for Frenchification. At least according to my husband’s family, who’ve been going there since the fifties. The San Souci is the last remaining water-front motel at Buckroe Beach. It was built in 1958 and has stayed true to its raising décor-wise. It is what it is. Buckroe is not really the beach beach; it fronts the Chesapeake Bay rather than the ocean. It offers only the politest … Continue reading A San Souci State of Mind by Martha Woodroof →
I’ve encountered many different roads to take on my quest to develop my style as a poet. Sometimes I’ve moved forward and sometimes I’ve stayed still, uncomfortable with change. I expect this has been the case with many poets. However, the totality of experiences has led me to a deeper understanding of what I’m doing and what I’m capable of. Looking back, I realize that an underlying factor in my progress has been the slow discovery, conscious and unconscious, of poetic techniques that work for me. These techniques were introduced to me from an early … Continue reading A Lifetime of Poetry →
One day I decided I wanted to write a short story with a sex scene in it. I decided this for two reasons. One, first and foremost, I had read a short story by my sister’s high school boyfriend and he executed a sex scene in this way: ‟They did it.” It seemed to me that he handled it quickly and skillfully. Reason number two, (and this is more subterranean): I had males in my writing group I wanted to impress. Usually when I join a writer’s group it is a female-only affair and although … Continue reading The Making of the Third Eye →
August 10, as my friend, Wikipedia, tells me, what is often called (by historians and other interested parties) “the Second Revolution” occurred in France, when the mob stormed the Tuileries Palace, effectively deposing King Louis XVI, in 1792. Unlike Bastille Day, it is not a day marked with celebration and felicitation, but it certainly was important. Especially to Napoleon Bonaparte, who, through a concatenation of events, not least of which the deposing of the king, became First Consul in 1799 and Emperor in 1804. The third chapter of that story (or is the fourth or … Continue reading Happy Tuileries Day →
Kristen Green, author of acclaimed, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, shares thoughts on how she was able to write her first book. KG: I didn’t know how to write a book, having never done it before. But, after working for years as a journalist, what came naturally to me was writing in chunks. So that’s what I set out to do. To tell the story of my hometown, which closed its schools rather than desegregate, I essentially had three kinds of chunks: Memoir. Reportage. History. After selling the book to … Continue reading How I Wrote My First Book →
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