Category: Writing/Revision

  • Estuary (writing while walking)

    Estuary (writing while walking)

    Knitted into the plot of the novel manuscript I’m working on (which I won’t summarize here) is an estuary restoration project. I’ve drawn on a couple of preserves I’ve visited in recent years to think about what the imagined place might look like, what it is trying to accomplish. Recently, I hiked through the South Slough…

  • ‘Tis the season

    Back to school means back to satire.  So much to choose from—my own contribution is BEST LAID PLANS. Can I admit this is the piece of “academic writing” closest to my heart? Surely the one that’s been most fun to share. Some of the research behind the story. . . less fun. Hijinks and lowjinks…

  • Recording of “Misdirection” from The Common

    The cover’s scrambled cassette tape is the perfect lead in, as I remember so many bus rides listening to so many tapes mixed by other passengers, bus drivers, hangers on. Come along on a family hiking trip in the páramo, the upland spanning the Colombian border, in my Issue 21 story “Misdirection.” Click to hear a new…

  • The Common #21

    The Common #21

    I’m so pleased to have a story, “Misdirection,” in this issue of The Common. Now available for pre-order, digital editions available from April 26.

  • If you’ve ever seen a flamingo. . .

    None of my photos are as close-up, glossy, right there with you as the alert yet resting bird Nowhere Magazine paired with my story, “Of a Feather.” But I did see flamingos in Patagonia a couple of years ago, and I did take pictures. And it did start me thinking about other flamingos I had…

  • Duct Tape Obelisk 2

    I wrote about the duct-taped obelisk, subsequently restored, last fall (Duct Tape Obelisk). It’s real—or it was—and it gave me a springboard or an excuse or a pretext to think about birthdays in cemeteries and restoration and rebellion and loss. Some of which made it into a short story, “Give that Girl a Wilson Cigar!”,…

  • Duct Tape Obelisk

    There’s a cemetery I sometimes walk through on my way to work, or on my way home. They’re mostly historic graves, though I think interments still take place from time to time. It’s quiet, with tall trees, a little poison oak, a caretaker’s trailer, and cigarette butts ankle deep at the entrance closest to campus,…

  • Stretching

    Thinking it would do me good to stretch my creative muscles in a different way, I signed up for an 8-week playwriting workshop this spring, taught by Paul Calandrino at Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Last time I tried to write a play, I was in high school. But I’ve read and seen and studied and taught…

  • Greening

    It is the most beautiful of spring days, Friday the 13th, a good fortune day–why not? The view from my study window is green. Maple green, rhododendron green, cedar green. Most of them two-tone this time of year, old growth against new. I’ve been reading about neuroscience and gratitude and Greece; I’ve been writing stories…

  • Can a great story start with a salad?

    Alcohol. Because a great story never starts with a salad. I noticed the sign outside a bar in my neighborhood. I was jogging, so I didn’t have a camera, and when I thought to go back for a photo, an announcement of the weekly special had taken its place. But it struck me as an…