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Writing in a Stockpot or a Skillet
There are at least two ways to cook up a new story or poem: #One is the stockpot process. You take out the stockpot with the intent to make chicken soup. You go to the refrigerator, get the chicken and carrots and an onion, find in the pantry the rice, reach down the sage, salt,…
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Art Where the Heart Lives
Wow! Good week for poetry from where I sit. On Wednesday I attended a monthly writing group at the American Museum of Western Art in Denver. These events are co-sponsored by Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop, and I always begin the session with a nagging troll in my head who says, “You have nothing to say about…
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Word for the Day Is Wall
The Great Wall of China, built with slave power about the third century BC was ineffective against invaders. Now it’s a tourist site. The Biblical Old Testament tells us about the Battle of Jericho: “And it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the horn, that the people shouted with a great…
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Why I Own Books
I’ve moved dozens of times and in those moves I tried to free myself of the weight of books. It has yet to work. The books sneak back into my home like stray cats. And this week I had a lesson in the joy of owning them–the books, not the cats. Reading a library book,…
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Judging a Book by Its Cover
Whoever first coined that phrase was not in the business of selling books. Authors and editors pay for and applaud effective book design. Readers expect to know at a glance who wrote the book and which genre it fits. The all important title may do the job, but often a sub-title helps to categorize the…
Karen Douglass, Author 