Category: Writing/Revision

  • Little Notebooks

    I always carry a little notebook in my purse. Just in case. Sometimes I’ll carry the same one for years, if it doesn’t fill up fast. When my kids were younger, there would be tic-tac-toe games or weird scribbles on the middle pages, if I’d handed over the notebook in a desperate ploy to entertain…

  • Bookbinding II

    Flush with my success in Bookbinding I, I enrolled in Bookbinding II. Some of us just don’t know how to get out of school. This project was more complicated: French stitch. More pages, more steps; linen tape and sewing weights.   Books have bodies: head, tail, fore-edge, spine Folio = one sheet folded Signature =…

  • Boxed Set, part II–memory stories in and out of the box

    Literal Latté‘s spring 2015 issue is up–and with it my story, “Cloud Seeding in the Andes,” beautifully illustrated by Joseba Elorza. Coincidentally, today also marks 35 years since we returned to the US from that first trip to Ecuador–first for me, first that counts in memory–the trip that has served as springboard (nest, epicenter, scaffolding, excuse) for…

  • Boxed set (stories in waiting)

    Somewhere at the bottom of this stack of boxes is a stack of notebooks, detailed journals from trips to Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru. I know there are stories in them, waiting to be retrieved, rewound, reworded. Deciphered–I never won a penmanship prize. Embarrassing stories and clever observations and little aha! triumphs. I count them as…

  • 5th annual Wine and Words–with a contest!

    This will be the fifth year I’ve helped to organize a Wine and Words tasting at Winter’s Hill Estate. I’ve written here before about the fun of reading aloud, and listening to others. Back in February 2011, no less, with Tasting Notes after our first event. This year’s word flights will include fiction, poetry, translation, and–for…

  • Bookbinding I

    I took my first bookbinding class today. I’ve had this in the back of my mind for a long time. We used to make books in elementary school; for years, I made my parents a book every Christmas. But I started wanting a little more refinement in my bindings, a little polish to my technique.…

  • Splash, smooth, silver: A thousand words in pictures

    Ready for the year to turn and the light to return, I took a walk today–after the downpour, in the drizzle break between showers–and watched the full creek rushing muddy and slick through my end of town, and the raindrops poised on the rosehips and unknown (to me) berries, lone splash of color against the green…

  • Lovely present becomes lovely help

    One of my most favorite books in childhood was Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present (Charlotte Zolotow, illus. Maurice Sendak), in which Mr. Rabbit helps the little girl assemble a birthday gift for her mother. One of the book’s refrains (the story is structured around nested repetitions with variation) has been coming back to me lately…

  • Frozen

    After it snowed and before it really started raining this morning, I went for a walk. More of a crunch-tromp-glide-stumble-crunch; the ice crust on the snow was brittle, and the snow was deep. Here where it isn’t supposed to snow–or not snow much–we are frozen on the verge of spring. The ice is clarifying, isolating,…

  • Words of the Day

    Looking for some background on the bandoneon (more on that in a week or two) I came across the word bandoline: “a mucilaginous preparation made from quince seeds and used for smoothing, glossing, or waving the hair.” (Random House Dictionary of the English Language). Yes, it was that mucilaginous that pulled me in to read the full definition.…