by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 8, 2011 | accumulation, catching moments, Columbus GA |
Not sure which is my favorite season, but I have both fall and winter to look forward to, one right after the other. Last Friday morning, I opened the back door and felt cool air outside– 72 degrees in Columbus, Georgia....
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 1, 2011 | How We Spend Our Days |
Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.” Today, please welcome writer Heidi Durrow: I only hope that today will be the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 31, 2011 | first novels, reviews |
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, the debut novel by Heidi Durrow, is a story that will make you ache in all the best ways. Barbara Kingsolver chose it as the winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction in 2008, and it was published by Algonquin in 2010. It is a story...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 29, 2011 | Pam Houston |
From Colorado, California, New York, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, and Germany–we are a writing group that meets twice a year in person and exchanges manuscripts two other times by mail. We read a book a month and discuss it online. We also...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 19, 2011 | accumulation, catching moments, continuous life, life, the day, time |
And you wipe the snow out of your hair and get back into your car and drive off toward an accumulation of the usual daily stuff–there is dinner to be made and laundry to be done and helping the kids with their homework and watching television on the couch with...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 18, 2011 | craft of writing |
From Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, how an image can make words come alive: Without the image: Her thoughts were not clearly articulated in her mind, but she could feel them moving swiftly, gathering. “What are you thinking about?” George Orson said,...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 17, 2011 | craft of writing, details, novels |
In Await Your Reply, published in 2009, Dan Chaon uses repetition in a very cool way. Instead of bogging down the original scene, he pushes the action forward first, then a bit later, moves in for a close-up or two, adding additional details. For example, on page 246,...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 16, 2011 | accumulation, craft of writing, novels, stories, time |
In the surprisingly interesting Reader’s Guide at the back of Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, Chaon writes: As a writer, I feel like I’m always in conversation with the books that I’ve read. Yiyun Li, the author of The Vagrants, feels the same...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 15, 2011 | craft of writing, details, novels |
From the first page of Dan Chaon’s novel: On the seat beside him, in between him and his father, Ryan’s severed hand is resting on a bed of ice in an eight-quart Styrofoam cooler. Enough said? Dan Chaon’s second novel and fourth book, Await Your...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Aug 8, 2011 | life, reading, shapes, the day, time |
I adore this portrait of May Sarton. I used it in a blog post on August 8, 2009. I also used some of the same quotes, but I had a very different reaction to them two years ago. There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by...
