by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 13, 2008 | poetry |
I’m a writer. A writer who hasn’t yet published her novel. And I had a dream. Not I have a dream–which of course I do, to publish a novel. But I had a dream. In my dream, a literary agent told me my writing wasn’t good because it was...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 12, 2008 | craft of writing, stories |
If you want to see a writer move seamlessly from one scene to the next without any extra words, take a look at this passage from the “Big Bertha Stories” in Bobbie Ann Mason’s collection, Midnight Magic: Jeannette wanted to stop for ice cream. She...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 11, 2008 | memory, reading, the day |
“He said, ‘It still looks like an accident, the first one. Even from this distance, way outside the thing, how many days later, I’m standing here thinking it’s an accident.’ ‘Because it has to be.’ ‘It has to be,’...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 10, 2008 | first novels |
The short list for the Booker Prize was announced yesterday. Six novels were chosen from the long list of thirteen. Of the six, two are first novels! Only one was written by a woman. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet read any of these. The short list is as...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 9, 2008 | catching moments |
“A story,” Graham Greene wrote, “has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” The End of the Affair. The first sentence. Of course, then there was the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 8, 2008 | novels, shapes |
On Monday, February 26, 1951, John Steinbeck wrote, “I don’t understand why some days are wide open and others are closed off, some days smile and others have thin slitted eyes and others still are days which worry. And it does not seem to be me but the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 7, 2008 | truth |
This morning I remember Ellen Gilchrist writing about getting down on the floor to play with her books. I want to find that passage. With my coffee in one hand, I begin to pull her books off the shelf. I think it’s in Falling Though Space, her journal, but I...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 6, 2008 | craft of writing |
“Her father turned around. ‘Pancakes?’ he asked her. Winnie didn’t want pancakes. ‘Sure,’ she said.” You will find these simple sentences, which take you to the heart of Winnie, at the end of the story “Ship in a...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 5, 2008 | shapes |
This morning I’m searching for shapes, instead of schedules. What shape will today take–will these writings take? In Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote, “The pattern of our lives is essentially circular.” ...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 4, 2008 | first novels |
In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard writes of schedules as nets for “catching days.” She says, “I have been looking into schedules.” Then she describes the schedule of a Danish aristocrat living a hundred years ago, who started his day by...
