(David Salle) once told me that he never makes any preparatory drawings for or revises anything in his paintings. Every stroke of the brush is irrevocable; nothing can be changed or retracted. A few false moves and the painting is ruined, unsalvageable…He also once told me of how he often gets lost as he paints:… Continue Reading >>>
Category Archives: Latest News
You are in this light and water: Breakthrough for the week of 6/7/2021
Enter. Occupy the rock. Leave the safety of not writing and tell us the story of finding yourself in a new and unknown place. My story? I once walked this shoreline. I was eight years old, twelve, sixteen, twenty-five, sixty. I danced in and out of the cold Northern water. I gathered pebbles that gleamed… Continue Reading >>>
You set out on an unmarked road to write: Breakthrough Tip for now
You don’t begin. You begin and stop. You don’t resume. You believe that without directions, you are lost. Writing is hard work. If you’re lucky, you remember when writing seemed to pour through you. You were a conduit. You didn’t need to think, and if you did think, the writing seemed to go flat. Now,… Continue Reading >>>
Look through: Breakthrough for the week of 5/3/2021
What lies ahead of you? As you consider this question, do you think of all that you think you have to accomplish in the near and far future? And, should you think that, do you decide to click on Netflix or burrow under the covers on your bed, or suddenly have to clean out every drawer… Continue Reading >>>
Evidence and Proof: thanks to Jerry Seinfeld
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. – Jerry Seinfeld, comedian Writing is one of the last pieces of evidence that people are still grateful and giving a damn. – Mary Sojourner I write from eighty-one years of life. I write from sixty-nine years of… Continue Reading >>>
The Great Taboo – Grief: Breakthrough Writing for April 2, 2021
If you have lost a time, a person, a means of knowing yourself – and let others know your grief, you have most likely heard this response: “It is time for you to move on.” Laraine Herring, writer, teacher and loss survivor, would disagree. Her new book, A Constellation of Ghosts is both a fiercely… Continue Reading >>>
Crow Truth: Breakthrough for the week of March 29, 2021
Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over. —Neil Gaiman Tell us a lie. Tell us a lie about your truth. Shape what isn’t into what is. Don’t tell… Continue Reading >>>
You don’t have Forever; and you may have it easy: Breakthrough for the week of 2/22/2021
I don’t work – and “work” is the operative concept – on my new novel. I edit. I look at the photos of much younger writers reviewed in main-stream media and want nothing more than to finish off the salted caramel ice cream in the freezer. Or go for a walk. Or watch yet another… Continue Reading >>>
Plagued: Breakthrough Writing for the week of 2/8/2021
You give into distraction as if it is a murderer; you lie there, waiting to be killed Today: fight for your life. —-Miranda July I have avoided writing about the Corona virus – in the same way that I almost never wrote about Donald Trump. I have believed that both pathogens have been treated in… Continue Reading >>>
Give-away:Breakthrough for the week of 1/25/2020
So it went, with safety, the more you guarded, the less you had. —Richard Powers I once walked along a placid river in a placid town. I was anything but placid. I had lost much, not the least of which was the mountain town that had once seemed an ordinary paradise. I walked along the… Continue Reading >>>
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