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On Writing and Living
Handling gorse may require heavy equipment (and it’s listed as a Weed of National Significance in Australia): Gorse management by the Victorian Gorse Task Force, http://www.vicgorsetaskforce.com.au. Read-aloud time has always been crucial to surviving long trips in my family…along with hiking breaks every hour… Continue Reading “Know Your Plants!”
Image courtesy of the National Council on Aging Where have all the elders (or at least middle-aged folks) gone? Literary and mainstream fiction are peopled by narrators of all ages (well, maybe not too many babies, but you know what I mean). Science fiction,… Continue Reading “Wounded or Waning Powers”
I used to belong to the most amazing writing-critique group. We had all the ingredients for an effective and supportive group. Our five members were not too many for a personalized approach and not too few to supply something to read at each monthly… Continue Reading “WRITING Around The Edges”
Mysterious lake, courtesy of freeimages.com Writing saved my life. Reflecting on the year-plus I’ve spent intermittently tending to this blog, I notice I’ve spent my time addressing challenges in world-building and character development, but I’ve danced around the heart of it: what inspires somebody… Continue Reading “Writing Saved My Life”
Children (one on foot, one in a wheelchair) careen down a steep slope. Erica Meza, “Disability,” https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2018/december/the-one-in-the-wheelchair–a-look-at-childrens-books-and-disability2/ Lately, I’ve noticed a long-overdue trend, in various genres, where a story’s central character experiences life with a disabling condition. As a science fiction and fantasy… Continue Reading “Disabilities and Possibilities: Characters with Disabilities in SF and Fantasy”
Image Credit: campaignlive.co.uk This morning, I was reading aloud (to my spouse and younger daughter) a hilarious article in my favorite magazine, Backpacker, where readers described the craziest things they or someone else took into the backcountry. When I got to the piece de… Continue Reading “Fighting the Good (or at least believable) Fight”
Elychion the cat wrestling with her gambling, football-watching, and drinking problem. I didn’t want to write about a drug-addicted surgeon who’d lost his license and resorted to performing illegal procedures in a back alley. But regardless of my intentions, he showed up on the… Continue Reading “Characters Who Challenge You”
Photo Credit: “The 4 Differences Between Introversion and Social Anxiety by Ellen Hendriksen, Quiet Revolution, https://www.quietrev.com/the-4-differences-between-introversion-and-social-anxiety/ Every few years, Lexus swoops back into my sedate world. (I’ve changed her name, age, physical description, and life story to protect her privacy.) At six feet tall,… Continue Reading “Writing as an Act of Compassion: What I Learned from Lexus”
Image from the Spitzer Telescope courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=3883 As a teenager, I spent much of my free time gaming. But because this happened in the 1980s, when video games were a low-resolution-graphic gleam in designers’ eyes, “gaming” meant tabletop role-playing… Continue Reading “Spacetime of One’s Own”
Fire tower image courtesy of Chief Logan and the Helena, Montana Fire Department Archive, http://www.helenahistory.org When I got past the awkward early-reading stage and had developed enough skill to immerse myself in books, I discovered the joy of getting up before dawn and reading… Continue Reading “Keeping Vigil”
Valor and Compassion 