In the SF Bay area, we’ve recently had unseasonably warm days, totally out of character for us at this time of year in San Francisco and the other nearby coastal regions. Most of us have been delighted to sit out in our yards at night and enjoy this new balmy climate. But then I read in the paper recently that the planet has been recording one of the hottest springs, reminding me that while I’m luxuriating in these above-average temperatures, the weather extremes are killing the planet. It’s a startling and disturbing statistic. (more…)
A week ago I typed THE END on page 264 of the manuscript for the fourth and final book 
I guess there is something comforting about the way today’s youth have become accustomed to their parents/guardians checking on them at all times via smart phones, etc. It may feel like being held in a kind of web (and here I’m not referring to the World Wide Web), a loving network. But it also suggests to me what it’s like to be trapped in a spider’s snare. The idea that none of us can have a moment when we aren’t being scrutinized in some way makes me shudder. What has happened to the notion of privacy and freedom? Am I old-fashioned to think they still are virtues?
I’m grieving the loss of dictionaries, thick, massive volumes that I used to get lost in. I would open a page and find hundreds of words, all of them demanding my attention, each a miniature world to explore. But now I’ve become a victim of on-line lexicons because they are handier than putting aside my laptop computer and marching into the other room to unload the Oxford from a bookshelf where it resides. 
Foghorns blast through the 7 AM San Francisco overcast. The only woman in the place, I saunter into the longshoreman’s union hall, trying to appear as if I did this every day. A few cigarette-scarred wooden tables offer a place for the men to gather and talk while waiting to be called to work. Billowing clouds of cigarette smoke hang ominously over everyone. 
Like detectives, writers need to be constantly observant, picking up clues from what people are wearing, how they gesture, the words they speak, the way they interact with others. They study people’s facial expressions and what they might suggest about the person, storing away the data in their memory banks. Or they’ll take notes in a writer’s journal that they’ll refer to later. 
Memoir writing blurs the line between truth and imagination in this revealing conversation with Lily Iona MacKenzie. We explore how creative writing techniques shape both fiction narrative and personal stories, as Lily explains her unique approach: “you lie in service of the truth.”
Yesterday, I had to kill time (terrible metaphor) while waiting to hear a friend of mine do a reading of his newly published memoir at a Corte Madera bookstore. So I hung out at Marin County’s Corte Madera Library. 
For years I felt guilty about breaking the heirloom toys my stepfather’s mother had preserved, relics of another era. I can still remember the excitement of lifting each object out of the boxes where they had been stored and bringing them to life again: tiny china dishes with hand-painted flowers; a miniature stagecoach carrying riders and pulled by horses; dolls with porcelain faces and hands, features frozen in smiles, dressed in stylish Victorian gowns; a doll house with elegant furniture and a family. 
Editing writing requires tremendous restraint. I was reminded of this recently when a poem I had submitted to an anthology was accepted providing I approved of the editor’s changes. I’m open to thoughtful revision suggestions—a text can always be improved—but I assume the recommendations will be just that, insightful observations that cause me to re-think my work. In that light, I can re-enter a poem or story and see if any of the ideas resonate enough for me to make changes. Yet since I’m the poem’s creator, I expect to revise it myself and have the last word on its content. 
I’ve been thinking about how loosely we use abstract words like love, happiness, and truth as if they had concrete, observable meaning. I tend to revolt from using love to close my email or other exchanges unless I really feel love for the person I’m corresponding with. It bothers me when people sign their correspondence “love” without considering whether or not the emotion really applies to the recipient. Maybe you feel loving towards someone on most days, but not every day. Isn’t it deceitful to say “love” if you aren’t feeling it at the moment? Wouldn’t such a response seem confusing? It leads the reader to believe that the writer actually has such strong feelings, that somehow we’re part of the writer’s inner circle. Often that isn’t true. 
Being a first-rate writer requires the same kind of training that an architect receives. A typical program includes courses in architectural history and theory, building design, construction methods, professional practice, math, physical sciences, and liberal arts. Writers may not need to study math or the physical sciences, but they do need to give themselves the best liberal arts education they can find, both formal and informal. And like architects, in order to be successful in their field, writers need not only vision and a rich imagination but also a strong foundation. 
Thank you, Zackary Vernon, for taking the time to share your professional writing journey with me and my readers. 
Being part of an on-line writing group for several years has provided many benefits. But with the positives come a few negatives.
Until recently, if I had wanted a restful getaway, I would not have chosen San Francisco or any big city. Getting away meant heading out of town, usually for a coastal inn. I wanted the leisurely pace and ocean views of Mendocino, Pacific Grove, Carmel, or Big Sur. Do cities enrich your writing? See what guest author ELIZABETH WINTHROP ALSOP has to say!
October 14, 2024
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I’m grateful that I live in a big city where I am forced to rub up against people who are not like me.On the subway, I sit next to human beings of all ages and skin colors and shapes. In the streets, I see people in wheelchairs, joyful children, panhandlers down on their luck, women in heels I couldn’t wear for half a block, and helmeted, gray-haired women on bikes weaving their way in and out of traffic. I say hello and introduce myself to the homeless man even though I don’t always drop money into his paper cup. I offer my subway seat to a father with a baby strapped to his front, and he declines with a grin. With my foot, I hold the elevator door for an older woman using a cane and in return, with an eye on my arms full of packages, she pushes the button for my floor.
While I wear a wide-brimmed straw hat in summer and earmuffs in the winter, they sport yarmulkes and fezzes and bike helmets and hijabs and their hair might be dyed all colors of the rainbow or they may have shaved it all or just half of it off. When I am wearing four layers against the cold, I can admire the younger generation’s bare tattooed skin or their muscular legs protruding from baggy shorts or swathed in tight leggings.
Do I know these people personally? No. Do they make me angry? Yes…when I’m groped in the subway or someone cuts in front of me in a line or steals my wallet when I’m not watching my purse. Do they scare me? Sometimes…when a person breaks into an angry harangue against the world in the middle of the sidewalk or rattles me with her disconnected stare in my subway car. Do they make me smile? Often…when they are dressed in wild costumes or carry a parrot on their shoulder or play their bagpipes on a street, ignored by most busy passersby.
Do they make me curious? Yes, when I can’t see what book they’re reading or when they are speaking a foreign language I don’t recognize or when they stop me on the street to ask me to contribute to a cause.
But, like these people or not, I can’t separate myself from them by getting in a car or hiding out in my apartment. Every time, I step on the bus or stride down the sidewalk to do an errand, I am in community with a slice of the world, and for that experience, I continue to be deeply grateful most especially because I’m a working writer.
In the city, I am constantly inspired by the whirl of humanity around me. A detail I note in my daily travels may make it into my novel and months later, not even I will remember the connection. It might be the green eyes of the barista who serves me a dirty chai in my favorite coffee shop or the close cropped beard of my neighbor which fits perfectly my description of the sly bailiff in my 14th Century castle. Just as artists usually have a sketchbook at hand, I carry a journal where I can scribble a quick description of people, places, weather, sounds, emotions. As Gustave Flaubert said, “the good God is in the detail” which has always meant to me, be as specific as you can, especially in fiction where the reader needs to feel welcomed and grounded from page one.
Day after day, I thank the city which enriches my writing because, to paraphrase Mary Oliver, it offers itself so completely to my imagination.
Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com) is the author of over 50 works of fiction for adults and children under the pen name Elizabeth Winthrop. These include the award-winning fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle as well as the short story, The Golden Darters, read on the nationwide radio program, Selected Shorts,and included in Best American Short Story anthology, and Island Justice and In My Mother’s House, two novels now available as eBooks. She is the daughter of the acclaimed journalist, Stewart Alsop. Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a family history about her parents’ love affair during World War II and their marriage lived in the spotlight of Washington during the 1950s was published by Regal House, October 25, 2022.
Follow her newsletters on Substack.