by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 14, 2011 | catching moments, craft of writing, mfa |
Miciah Bay Gault, Managing Editor of Hunger Mountain, was inspired by a note George Saunders wrote on one of her stories to discover what was “unique and iconic” to her. In her engaging Editor’s Note to Hunger Mountain 15, she describes Ray...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 10, 2011 | craft of writing, essays, mfa, obsession, place |
Friday night I settled into my bed at The Whetstone Inn with the latest issue of Hunger Mountain. I wanted to read Robin MacArthur’s essay, “Abandoned Landscapes.” Robin lives in Marlboro only minutes from where I was at the moment. What fun to read...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 22, 2010 | craft of writing |
Another thing is the dialogue. In the early pages of By Nightfall, Peter is in bed with his wife, and they’re flipping channels on the TV. They stop on Vertigo. I’m going to cut into the middle of the conversation where the line that starts the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 18, 2010 | craft of writing |
So much to love about Michael Cunningham’s new novel, By Nightfall, set in the New York art world. One of my favorite things is the way the main character Peter describes his world by reference to literary markers. For example, on the first page, he describes a...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Nov 12, 2010 | craft of writing, mfa |
Words Overflown by Stars, edited by David Jauss, is the craft book from the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program. I started it about this time last year and just finished it a few weeks ago. 432 pages of craft essays–a text book with the feel of a...
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...
