by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 27, 2010 | craft of writing, stories |
Many of the stories in the new Alice Munro collection, Too Much Happiness, were first published in The New Yorker and are still available online. “Dimensions,” the first story in the collection, will be the story I’ll take apart in the next post....
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Jan 25, 2010 | craft of writing, stories |
In an essay entitled “Artful Stealing” by Steven Schwartz in the current issue of “The Writer’s Chronicle,” he writes, “…you break into your own material by finding the key to someone else’s.” Each time I take a...
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 | Sep 28, 2009 | my writing, stories |
My story, “The Empty Armchair,” which is loosely based on my first novel, The Painting Story, appears in the fall issue of Contrary Magazine. Here’s the beginning: Being sick has taken away the busy surface of my life. Gone are the errands and the...
by Cynthia Newberry Martin | Sep 14, 2009 | my writing, stories |
My story, “The Splitting Sound,” appears in the fall issue of Clapboard House. Here’s the first paragraph: Across the street, I leaned against the yellow rental car. The house was smaller than I remembered, but that’s what everyone always said. The...
