Category: Uncategorized

On torture.

“The best advice I ever got was from an elephant trainer in the jungle outside Bangalore. I was doing a hike through the jungle as a tourist. I saw these large elephants tethered to a small stake. I asked him, ‘How can you keep such a large elephant tied to such a small stake?’ He…

I am so excited. I finally–FINALLY–feel like I’ve gotten my short story collection assembled and completed into a cohesive manuscript. I’ve written one last story to anchor the collection (six before it, six after), taken out ones that I was sort of including and looking the other way over, and I really feel good about…

ITME’s fall students are just starting their 12 week semester program and the first update can be read here. We have a great group and are anticipating a great semester!

I’m struggling with a novel that is nearly good. I have recently come to understand that it needs another draft, after I had told myself I was done. I can’t get to it yet because I’m finishing my short story collection, which is almost, almost there. And the writing I’m doing for the last story…

There has been a great debate raging in the community of dolphin researchers and animal ethicists about the intelligence of dolphins. Most of us have long believed that dolphins are intelligent, but a recent researcher is positing that they are not as intelligent as we have given them credit for. Personally, I think he’s a…

…Summer, that is. Sigh. My kiddos just left for school. My eldest is a Junior in high school, my middle is starting her first day of high school today, and my youngest, no longer a baby, is in fifth grade, top of the heap in elementary school. And to make things worse (better??) he is…

I got an email saying it had shipped…maybe it will come today. I’m waiting for Jim Tomlinson’s Things Kept, Things Left Behind, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Here is an excerpt from his “Backstory” essay, which can be read here. “There is a saying in playwriting that the scene is never about what…

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.…

“We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.” -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) This quote was in my inbox today, as part of my A.Word.A.Day email…