I live in a town where the writer who cranks it out rakes it in. I can’t get past page three in any of John Grisham’s books before I give up. Those books are page-turners though, you betcha, the whole who-dun-it thing, the thriller. Characters so thin you see right through them. People in my town, Charlottesville, Virginia, are so besotted with his celebrity they make a habit of dropping by the bookstore where he signs absolutely anything anyone wants in the frontispiece of his books. I have waited years for some reviewer to break … Continue reading At Least I’m Potatoes→
Over the past year, I watched Mike, one of my best friends, die of a brain tumor. In the midst of this misery, I came to think about things that make life worth living. Foremost is love, of course, but after that comes music. Music is a nondiscursive joy, like a view of mountains on a clear-blue day, that pulls one into the moment. To experience music is to forget everything else, to be here now. I say “experience” music rather than “listen to” music. Like most people, I enjoy listening to music; it provides … Continue reading Music Medicine→
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→
Balancing Craft and Business… Sharyn McCrumb, known for her Appalachian “ballad” novels, including The New York Times best sellers The Ballad of Tom Dooley, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, and Ghost Riders will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Virginia Writers’ Club Symposium. The Symposium, “Navigating Your Writing Life: Balancing Craft and Business,” will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., August 1 at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville. The Symposium is sponsored by the statewide VA Writers Club (VWC). Named … Continue reading A Balancing Act→
I was a typical child of Depression-era parents—left to fend for myself as long as I didn’t bring unwanted attention to my respectable, Southern family. I, like most of my age group, was what I call a self-rising child. Now we would be called free-range. I can quite clearly remember playing in deep construction culverts right after a big thunderstorm with no adult supervision and absolutely no thought of the way water can flash through channels like that, sweeping everything with it in a deathly way. And I can remember being an early teenager walking … Continue reading Scaffolding: Or How I Learned to Stop Being a Know-It-All and Take Advice from My 20-Something Son by Ginger Moran→
You’re watching a show, and suddenly it happens: the story cuts to a scene of a naked woman about to take a shower. Her breasts — huge and gravity-defying — jiggle and roll as she enters the shower stall, and at some point after she is wet, she presses them against the plate glass door of the shower for added effect. Then, for no apparent reason, the male protagonist in the story enters the bathroom, and comedy ensues as the man, embarrassed at seeing the woman’s bare breasts, somehow trips and falls face-first into her … Continue reading Japan: Your Culture’s Showing→
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