by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Feb 25, 2010 | accumulation, reading |
One of my friends refers to me as “the scribe” because I like to write stuff down. And one of the things I write down is how many books I read a year. As my tower of unread books grows taller and spawns little towers, it’s a way to prove to myself...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Feb 22, 2010 | reading, the day |
I haven’t had a morning in a while where I’ve allowed myself to drift from one thing to the next without accountability. When I was practicing law, I used to have to account for every six minutes. This morning I was trying to locate a Virginia Woolf quote...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 22, 2010 | craft of writing, mfa, reading, stories |
Like many of you, I feel that for some time now I’ve been reading like a writer. In other words, when I’m reading, I’m also noticing: tense shifts, point of view, use of time, distance between the narrator and the characters, the movement in and out...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 19, 2010 | craft of writing, reading, stories |
Here’s another one of those odd coincidences: It was January of last year that I did a post on James Salter who wrote one of my favorite novels, Light Years, and who in July of 2004 at the Tin House Writers Workshop told the audience: “I don’t read for pleasure...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 16, 2010 | accumulation, craft of writing, details, journeys, mfa, place, reading, the day |
Thank you to everyone who’s asked what it was like going to my first residency at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I think it’s taken so long for me to write this post because, in addition to catching up with life and not getting behind on my work, I was...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Dec 14, 2009 | reading |
In Ron Carlson’s new novel, The Signal, a book that includes both clotheslines and abandoned places, each word counts, as each word should but often doesn’t in novels. The Signal packs a lot into its 184 pages: six days in the life of its main character...
