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PICT0359In Texas, I get lost. 

Two lane roads open into four lane highways, and concrete consumes old pastures. Overpasses pile up like skyscrapers, and I grow restless behind the wheel of a borrowed car. Everything has changed.

I ride the freeways like a foreigner, holding my breath and missing my exits and circling the city until I find something familiar. Something constant.

The cemetery where my mother is buried. The houses where I grew up. The road to my Uncle’s home–as it rises and falls–on the way to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday.

I get lost in these images.

Then later, with a warm afternoon breeze on my face, the sound of cicadas send out their call in waves, like a radar. And I think, This is what it means to be home, the pull of memory: of easy conversations with my cousins, my sisters, my father, our time apart irrelevant; the feel of my grandmother’s hand in mine, her skin worn and fragile after 90 years but her spirit strong.

I carry all of this with me into the next morning as I board a plane before sunrise, hold tight each moment for several days after. For as long as I can, because I know it may be a year before I return.

Before I get lost again.

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Study Fiction to Write Creative Nonfiction

file000845471725“[T]rue stories, well told.” That’s the definition of creative nonfiction, Lee Gutkind says (in this brief radio interview), as he admits he loves to read fiction–even as he is the founder of one of the biggest nonfiction literary magazines, Creative Nonfiction.

Gearing up to teach my workshop on Flash Nonfiction in two weeks, I came across this interview with Gutkind in which he reminds writers that reading across genres enhances our skills as storytellers, especially when it comes to fiction and non.

All of us need to learn a lot more about the world than we ever did in the past, and the way in which we learn is through story. We don’t just learn by someone throwing information at us. We learn because people tell stories, and the stories are learning experiences. . . . Who can tell a story better than a fiction writer?

The interview is less than four minutes. You can’t finish your a cup of coffee that fast (if you can, holy cow). And, if the topic–of how studying techniques in fiction can enhance your nonfiction skills–piques your interest, consider joining us on August 24th for more about FLASH nonfiction, where we’ll discuss two major challenges in this sub-genre: Space and Telling the Truth.

Registration is easy. The hard part? Choosing the perfect pen and notebook to bring to class.

* Photo credit: imelenchon on morguefile.com

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Growing Your Readership (and Mine)

Tfile000401942226his week, Jane Friedman posted a video of her talk from the 2013 Midwest Writers Workshop on Audience Development. In the video, she shares her experience with starting a website: the quiet beginning, the learning curve, and the principles of cultivating readers “over the span of your career.”

Jane Friedman has over 180,000 (180 THOUSAND!!) followers on Twitter and tens of thousands of hits on her website daily. If you’re interested in readership and author platform, this video is worth the twenty minute investment of your time.

What I love most about her talk, besides her honest and humble perspective on how this all works, is her approach to any new (or ongoing) professional project, two simple words that I view as the underlying current in my work and writing:

Incremental improvement.

Writing as a craft is similar to audience development in that it grows or improves inch by inch. Page by page. On those days when I get caught up in (what seems to be) a lack of progress–on a story or on the novel–I need only look back on the last few months to see that I have been moving forward. In tiny increments.

As usual, it’s all about perspective.

And speaking of incremental improvement….

I’m also progressing to a new way for subscribers of this blog to receive email notifications when new posts go live:

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After Google Reader fell to the wayside, I turned to WordPress’ Jetpack plugin for readers to sign up via email. In the last several months, though, Jetpack has been letting in suspicious email subscribers–with login names like “puzzledhelp” and server tags like “topsandal” and a few risqué logins that might fit in better if I wrote erotica. Mmm hmmm…shady, if you ask me. The logins, that is. If you write erotica, more power to you. But, I digress….

While I love seeing my numbers rise, I don’t like thinking some tech worm has wiggled its way into my site. So, from here on out any subscriptions to this blog will run through a MailChimp campaign. I’ll be able to manage subscribers with a little more ease and comfort, and you’ll be able to manage your subscription with a little more control as well.

If you’re already subscribed, you don’t have to resubscribe. But, I do ask two things of you:

  1. First and foremost: if you receive more than one notification from me next week, please accept my apologies. I’m hoping, as I deactivate Jetpack and transfer everything over to Mail Chimp, everything will run smoothly and you’ll only see one email from me. But, technology isn’t always my friend.
  2. Should you receive more than one email from this site, feel free to unsubscribe from the email that does NOT include the MailChimp electronic stamp. If you have any trouble with this, contact me.

Incremental improvements. Little by little. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

(If, by chance, you’re not yet subscribed but would like to, MailChimp makes it easy. Just click the link on the sidebar.)

Are you able to see the progress–little by little–on your own projects, writing or otherwise?

* Photo credit: FlyingPete on morguefile.com