by Cynthia Newberry Martin | May 7, 2009 | craft of writing, memoir, memory, reviews, time |
Frank Conroy was the director of the Iowa Writers Workshop for 18 years. He was also a writer himself, the author of 5 books, including the “classic memoir” Stop-Time. He died of colon cancer in 2005 at the age of 69. “My faith in the firmness of...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Apr 29, 2009 | catching moments, craft of writing, memory, reviews |
“We weren’t really stealing them…But we call it stealing to make it more exciting.” Per Petterson is a writer who can stand inside a moment, turn in a circle and look up and down until there is no inch of that moment left unexplored. Mary...
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by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Apr 23, 2009 | craft of writing |
Apparently on a little F. Scott Fitzgerald kick… The first novel he submitted to Charles Scribner’s Sons was rejected. Erika Willett writes, “Beginning a pattern of constant revising that would characterize his writing style for the rest of his...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Apr 20, 2009 | craft of writing, reviews |
75 years ago this month, Tender is the Night was published. In a friend’s copy of the book, Fitzgerald inscribed the following: “If you liked The Great Gatsby, for God’s sake read this. Gatsby was a tour de force but this is a confession of...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Mar 27, 2009 | craft of writing, novels, reviews |
Before and After by Rosellen Brown was published in 1992. I read it in August of 2006 and gave it to everyone I knew for Christmas. It’s about a marriage and a family. It’s narrated in alternating chapters primarily by the husband and wife, Ben and...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Mar 9, 2009 | craft of writing |
In Georgia Heard’s book, The Revision Toolbox, she writes about “the sinking feeling that a writer gets after she reads her piece of writing and realizes that it’s not quite right.” But to me, the more important sinking feeling is the one I...
