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 >>>
Category Archives: Latest News
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 >>>
Forget resolutions; forget “hope”: Breakthrough writing for the week of 12/28/2020
She is on familiar ground – and not. She has lived near this forest long enough to know how to move in and through it. She sees what she has been looking for. It is her husband – and not. Chera Hammons’ novel, Monarchs of the Northeast Kingdom, is a harsh – and wonderfully written –… Continue Reading >>>
Ending/Conjunction/Beginning: Breakthrough for the week of 12/21/2020
Form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The… Continue Reading >>>
Interactions of great and ordinary consequence: Breakthrough for now and the unknowable future
For all of you, especially Gabe and Lynette I don’t know how anybody does anything these days. You’re right about COVID. It feels like a fugue state. I’m tired and uninspired, and realizing the importance of all of those seemingly inconsequential interactions that made life exciting or interesting or upsetting or frustrating, like a conversation… Continue Reading >>>
Thank you, writers…and here is Hurricane Jack:11/20/2020
I wrote last week: “Write about your post-American-election world – and let us know we are not alone. If I receive at least three pieces in my personal email: bstarr67@gmail.com, I will illustrate next week’s Breakthrough with a photo of Jack, the new and very very busy ginger kitten.” Thanks to Lis Venetiou, Cin Norris,… Continue Reading >>>
No Rest for the Writer: Breakthrough for the week of 11/9/2020
I scarcely know how to stay upright without the fear that has fossilized my spine for the last four years. Perhaps you know how it was to not only be afraid for our country (which had ceased to feel like my country), but for your safety. I didn’t put anti-Trump bumper stickers on my car.… Continue Reading >>>
Refuge: Wrap your writing around you
Take refuge. For now. Imagine your writing as a shawl, a cape, a beat-up hoodie. Enter this image and explore. Move through the layers. What time is it? Where are you? Who scrawled “Meow” across a window? Was it you? Were you alone? We have been told to isolate. Some of us fight the act.… Continue Reading >>>
Not Sure What to Write? Breakthrough for the Foreseeable Future
You better find something you care about enough to write it. This man doesn’t care about you. This umasked creep was in the Mountain Heart parking lot yesterday, Mountain Heart clinic where I – and many others much older and damaged than I am – go for medical care. I asked him if I could… Continue Reading >>>
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