WHEN MRS. BOISVERT TOLD ME in ninth-grade English class that I had the soul of a poet, I grimaced. “I want to be a scientist,” I said. She had no answer to that. But she had answers to lots of…
Tag: craft
The “writing” part of Writing.
Why I Love: Robert Anton Wilson
IT’S THE WAY HE BLOWS my mind. It’s the way he mixes conviction with doubt. It’s his searingly funny prose. It’s his search for Ultimate Relativity. It’s that he taught me some important Latin phrases, like “Cui bono?” and “Non…
On Blogorrhea (And Its Opposite)
ALTHOUGH I STILL CAN’T SIT for very long, I am also still happy that my seven-year writer’s block has evidently ended (albeit with the death of a close friend). But I will know that it’s really ended when I can…
First Graf(s): The Fellowship of the Ring
IF YOU HAVE ONLY SEEN the movie version of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you are missing out on an extraordinary literary work. Granted, it takes a while to get into — a criticism also (and often) leveled against…
Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.”
— Robert Frost
Mentors — An Appreciation
BECAUSE OF DARRYL CURTIS, I still say “deh-TAILS” instead of “DEE-tails.” Darryl was my boss at Santa Rosa news-talk radio station KSRO more than 20 years ago. To say I learned from him everything I know about radio reporting would…
First Graf: The Physiology of Taste
THE FIRST BOOK THAT ACTUALLY got me thinking about food as something other than tasty fuel with which to stuff my face was Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s 1825 work, The Physiology of Taste; or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Part travelogue, part…
Of Tone-Outs, Turnouts and a Press Badge
IT’S HARD TO WATCH LIVES literally going up in smoke in order to tell other people about it. But on a professional level, it’s thrilling to see firefighters bringing order to chaos. When I worked for the Sonoma Index-Tribune between…
Words To Bring Back: “Desultory”
– Definition: adj. marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, or purpose – Used in a sentence: Except for my relatively brief writing career, my life has been a desultory yet full one. – Why: I think it characterizes much…
Points of Honor, Literary and Otherwise
– STUFFING SENTENCES TO JUST UNDER their carrying capacity. – Never starting a blog post with “I.” – Writing exactly to required or desired length. – Being there on time. – Repeating verbatim anything someone wants said to another. –…
Tortured Gastronome
EVERY TIME ANTHONY BOURDAIN MAKES a reference on one of his TV shows to hanging himself in a shower stall, Ann and I swap meaningful looks. After all, that’s exactly how the 61-year-old chef, traveler, writer and raconteur ended up…
First Graf: Understanding Comics
THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE THE way you think about (as author Scott McCloud concisely defines it) “sequential art.” McCloud takes us inside the art form to explain how and why comics/graphic novels work. He tracks the 3,000-year history of Sequential…