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. (more…)
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. 
Onyx wind chimes shaped like birds hang outside my bedroom. Each time a breeze stirs them, their music reminds me of the first trip I took to Mexico. While there, I was hoping to discover a part of the country that photographs can’t capture—the spirit of the place. Lawrence Durrell claims that landscape communicates this aspect. He says, “All landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper, ‘I am watching you—are you watching yourself in me’?” 
I recently reread Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and have mixed feelings about the era and the characters. It’s difficult to read about Victorian morés from a 21st Century perspective. Not only do I need lenses that will give me a bi-cultural perspective, but I also feel squashed between a culture clash. Not long after I finished with Portrait, I read a review of A. M. Homes’ book May We Be Forgiven in The New York Review of Books. One of her main characters says, 
I’m remembering a fascinating article I read in the New York Review of Books some time ago about Joseph Cornell. In many ways, he feels like my spiritual father. I love his quirkiness, his living on the periphery, his unique vision. Reading about him makes me want to go out and haunt junk shops for interesting memorabilia to make things with, to start a collection that I can draw from. I had an image of turning an old radio into a kind of Cornell box. The Tsar of Writing: Anthony Marra
May 16, 2016
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I’ve now read two of Anthony Marra’s books, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and The Tsar of Love and Techno. Both are not only moving but also darkly funny. Someone once said that humor is a way of writing about serious matters, and Marra proves this saying to be true. He has chosen an area to write about whose inhabitants have been long-suffering. But somehow they manage to find specks of light in the soul-destroying darkness they inhabit. 
While A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is an official novel, official in the sense that it focuses on a handful of characters and is plotted, The Tsar of Love and Techno isn’t one. Instead, it’s a collection of linked stories that roam from the 1930s to the present and even beyond. Yet, Marra has so skillfully woven together these individual narratives that the work is as satisfying to read as a novel because the characters form part of a closely-knit network. By the end of the book, the narrative comes full circle so that the offspring of individuals encountered in the first section or two appear.
Consequently, one feels that this world had coherence and depth. There is violence and tragedy, but there also are family connections that somehow manage to survive just as the characters somehow manage to live through difficult situations.
In a scene where Kolya, the elder of a pair of youthful brothers is protecting his younger sibling from an assassination they have stumbled onto and are secretly witnessing in White Forest, the condemned man’s eyes happen to meet those of the younger brother’s. The man’s mouth is sealed with tape, but he tries to warn his killers about the boys’ presence: “He’s trying to warn them,” Kolya muttered disbelievingly. “He’s trying to warn the people about to kill him” (164). The killers didn’t pick up on what their prisoner was trying to say, but when one of them pulled the trigger to finally shoot their target, “nothing sounded but a hollow clack” (164). The condemned man ended up needing to show his murderers how to properly load the gun so he could experience his proper ending.
This kind of incestuous interaction is a major theme in The Tsar of Love and Techno. Victim and transgressor are so painfully intimate at times, it’s difficult to know whom to root for. But as a reader, I always was rooting for Marra, whose skill and wit give a new definition to the word “tsar.”