by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 8, 2010 | Columbus GA, essays, life, mfa, place |
I wrote a guest post for Doug Glover’s blog, Numéro Cinq, in the series he’s doing on what it’s like to live in various places. Here’s the first paragraph: In Columbus, Georgia, the seasons change, but they take their sweet time about it. First...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 1, 2010 | 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 Bruce Machart: For the past seven years, I have...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 30, 2010 | accumulation, reading |
Although I cannot read a book without a pencil or a pen in my hand, I cringe at the thought of folding down a page. So when I read, in addition to something to write with, I must have something to mark my spot with. I prefer an actual bookmark, but also use postcards,...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 27, 2010 | life, memoir |
Julian Barnes wrote Nothing To Be Frightened Of, a memoir about death, “in order to make the fear familiar.” I’m not sure he succeeds, but he does write with a compelling “matter-of-factness” about the subject: I suspect that if I get any...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 26, 2010 | accumulation, life, mfa, the day |
Yesterday started off rainy and ended with beautiful fall blue skies. And yesterday I started the day with two packets to turn in for this semester and ended the day with only one remaining. Today it’s very coppery and auburn outside. No rain but no blue...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 22, 2010 | first novels, place |
The Wake of Forgiveness, the debut novel by Bruce Machart–officially out as of yesterday from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt–has a big storyteller narrator who knows how to describe sweeping panoramas and then move seamlessly in for a close-up. We follow an owl...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 19, 2010 | accumulation, catching moments, journeys, life, the day, time |
It’s been another year and I missed it–completely never even thought about it until Friday night when I was visiting another blog, reading a post about how that week was that blog’s two-year anniversary–still not thinking about it–and...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 16, 2010 | accumulation, craft of writing, life, mfa, the day |
So Thursday morning was luxuriously wide open and the plan was to write a blog post and read about 50 pages of the novel I’m working on. I read the first paragraph of the novel about ten times and then put the papers down. Okay, blog post. Nothing. I answered a...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 14, 2010 | life, mfa, the day, truth |
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Oct 8, 2010 | provincetown |
In The Maytrees, Annie Dillard wrote, She herself hoped to paint, soberly, when she got old. In 2009, a week before I headed to Provincetown, I read in The Provincetown Banner that, at the age of 64, Annie Dillard was doing just that. Although she usually painted...
