What do the following have in common?  Not to put any pressure on you to answer this question, gentle reader, because after all it is summer, and the dog days are here, and our bodies [...]
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In part 1 of this rant, or musing, I began to explore the idea of the creative mind as a dream machine. If the mind of a fiction writer or poet is a blender that rec [...]
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When you see the words "dream machine," what image pops into your head? Maybe you think of the London space rock band with that name.  Or perhaps a psychedelic poster [...]
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Why did England goalie Robert Green let that easy ball roll in for the only USA goal in the 1-1 tie at the World Cup?  I believe I may have the answer. Wa [...]
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My friend Richie from up the street asks me, “When do you find time to write?”

“Late at night is the second best time,” I tell him, “for me anyway.” He waits for the rest of my answer.  ”But my favorite time is before sunrise.  Five a.m.  While you’re still sleeping.”

Richie cringes just at the sound of  ”five a.m.”  ”You set your alarm?” he asks.

“No, I just wake up some mornings and know it’s time to write. I awake the hound (Simone, our Italian greyhound) and we go downstairs together. She goes back to sleep on the sofa and I pour a large mug of Kona coffee and head for the keyboard.

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It’s been a long Memorial Day weekend, and I should have been writing, but instead I settled in one evening with a DVD of John Ford’s 1952 film The Quiet Man. Ford, who is best known for his Westerns filmed in Monument Valley in northern Arizona, directed John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in this beautifully filmed hymn to Ireland.

The Quiet Man was a film Ford had been trying to make for years, until finally Republic Pictures agreed, on the condition that Ford first make the studio a black-and-white Western, to make up for the losses they expected for The Quiet Man.

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As all writers have discovered, the stories are out there, waiting. Often they appear before us when we are on the move. Go for a walk or a drive and they simpl [...]
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The idea of linked poems, so beautifully realized in the new Bamboo Ridge Press book No Choice but to Follow, fits snugly into a larger idea. The four poets—Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita, and Christy Passion—linked their poems, one to the next, for twelve months in 2008.

What exactly did they use to link the poems?  They used words.  Taking the last line of the most recent poem as the starting point for a new poem, they connected not only poems, they also connected experiences, memories, and emotions. One poem built upon the other, the project grew, unfolding like an exotic, yet familiar, flower.

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Now this is different. There are half a dozen topics ping-ponging in my mind, but instead I read through the menu of choices on the screen and begin to stare at "Add New. [...]
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Here’s a rule I invite you to break. When you’re writing fiction, never put a list in your story. The reader, who wants to get on with the action, does not want [...]
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