The Work of Writing

When I stepped from hard manual work to writing, I just stepped from one kind of hard work to another. (Sean O'Casey)

One of My Favorite Books: A Green Journey

A Green Journey (Jon Hassler)

A friend, Eric Walljasper, introduced me to the writings of Jon Hassler. I love his books so much I keep his latest book on the shelf unread until a newer book comes out. That way I will always have another Hassler book to read. A Green Journey is as close to a perfect novel as I have ever read. Agatha McGee is a wonderful character and A Green Journey and its sequel, Dear James is a wonderful picture of an older, stubborn woman dragged toward change.


A Green Journey

On Editing

When there is a book you love as a reader, editing is not a different thing from reading. You just happen to have a pen in your hand and a relationship which enables you to share all sorts of picayune and pertinent thoughts with the person who did this work. (Gary Fisketjon, Vice-President at Knopf)

Emotion Hooks

Without emotion, fiction becomes flat and boring. With it, you hook your readers, pull them in, hold them to the end, and make them eager for your next story or novel.(From “Fiction’s Connecting Link: Emotion” by Kathy Jacobson from the book The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing)

Writing is Easy

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. (Gene Fowler)

Children's Picture Book/China: Mei Li

Mei LI (Thomas Handforth) **

After spending an eventful day at the fair held on New Year's Eve, Mei Li arrives home just in time to greet the Kitchen God.

This children's book tells the story of a little Chinese girl who slips away from her family to see the big city of Peking (now, Beijing) in the 1930s. The story is too long and has no compelling flow, but the illustrations stand the test of time and the picture of life before Mao is informing.

The book won the 1939 Caldecott Medal for best illustration in a children's book, the second book to win that award.

Poetry: Rose

Rose (Li-Young Lee) ****

I'm not an academic and don't critique poetry as an academic exercise. I read poetry for the language and where it takes me. What I look for in a poem is concise language with images that take my mind to another place/plane. Often just one well-turned phrase is all I need to endear me to a poet.

I got much more than that Li-Young Lee's first book of poems, Rose (published in 1986). It was a profound discovery for me. There is not a weak poem in the bunch. The following is my favorite:

FALLING: THE CODE

1.
Through the night
the apples
outside my window
one by one let go
their branches and
drop to the lawn.
I can't see, but hear
the stem-snap, the plummet
through leaves, then
the final thump against the ground.

Sometimes two
at once, or one
right after another.
During long moments of silence
I wait
and wonder about the bruised bodies,
the terror of diving through air, and
think I'll go tomorrow
to find the newly fallen, but they
all look alike lying there
dewsoaked, disappearing before me.

2.
I lie beneath my window listening
to the sound of apples dropping in


the yard, a syncopated code I long to know,
which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know


the meaning of what I hear, each dull
thud of unseen apple

body, the earth
falling to earth

once and forever, over
and over.


Rose