Category Archives: Rants

by Jilanne Hoffmann | June 26, 2012 · 3:48 pm

Here’s what Laurel’s been up to in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe she’ll give us the low down on how the 2nd Annual Chuckanut Writers Conference in Bellingham, WA, went last weekend.

Dear Writers

Dear Writers,

We got mobbed by the geezer gang at open mic! Here’s who was there and what they read:

Her astrologer determined that CJ Prince would write about sex and death, so no surprise that she launched the night with pieces titled “One Night Stand,” “Hot,” and “Vanity.” After we broke for cold showers, Carol Hunter resumed with a very moving piece on the fallout of the drug war in Mexico. Dianne Meyer shared a beautiful and humorous tribute to a writing friend, “Ethel, When Last Seen.” Vince Laudi offered two protest pieces—”The Gun Lobbyist” and “Our God is Better than Your God”—along with “Coal Train,” a spoken song in search of a melody. Janet Oakley beautifully read “Technicolor Dreams,” published in the anthology A Cup of Comfort for Women.

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by Jilanne Hoffmann | June 12, 2012 · 1:48 pm

A Banner Week for Women Writers – or Not?

Did anyone notice that the June 5th email list of The New York Review of Books online featured pieces written by no less than SEVEN women? out of TEN authors.

A blinding 70%!!!

If you’ve heard about the presumed big splash the VIDA Count made (scroll down their Website to view the damning PPT charts), regarding the dearth of women writers in major media outlets and literary venues, one can only hope that this is more than an anomaly.

But if you compare the online version with its paper counterpart, the June 21st issue, the picture doesn’t look as rosy. The paper edition features a paltry THREE women in a sea of TWENTY men.

Only 13%!!!!!

Now, dear reader, is the NYRB trying to hoodwink us? Do they think that they can appease the women who read online while catering to the old male guard who read the paper edition?

WHAT, I ask, WHAT is going on here?

Any ideas?

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Tagged as discrimination, male bias, New York Review of Books, VIDA, women writers

by Laurel Leigh | March 21, 2012 · 1:39 pm

Writing as Calculus by Jilanne Hoffmann

Here’s a wonderful post, actually a follow-up post to Jill’s trials with her son and his school writing assignment.

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Tagged as craft, writing

by David J. Marx | March 12, 2012 · 9:13 am

Seeking that Elusive Aha Moment

It’s the surprise discovery that ties everything together. It’s the jolt of clarity that I feel in in my core. It’s the suddenly acquired measure of wisdom that will be part of me for the rest of my days. It’s what I hope to find when I read. And it’s why I write.

The greatest Aha Moment that I’ve ever read is Carver’s, “A Small Good Thing.” If you haven’t read it, stop whatever you’re doing and read it. Continue reading →

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by Jilanne Hoffmann | February 29, 2012 · 4:22 pm

VIDA

Male writers may feel uncomfortable (or not, if you’re V.S. Naipaul), women writers may want to–well, blow chunks. If you’ve never heard of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, you will know much about them after you click on the link.

The article speaks for itself. What do you think?

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Tagged as discrimination, literature, VIDA, writing

by Jilanne Hoffmann | February 28, 2012 · 11:05 am

Seeing the World

Worth reading: Laurel’s story exercise

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by David J. Marx | February 27, 2012 · 11:06 am

Just Write

I have upwards of three dozen books on the subject of writing. I buy them, hoping that the key to the Holy Grail will be in its pages and seep from the book into my brain. I’ll read some or even all of the book, then put it down, because the Giants game is coming on, or some other vital event is about to happen and the next time I see the book is when I pull it out from the bottom of a stack of other books that I will also, someday surely read.

Who am I fooling? Myself, of course. The Holy Grail of writing is to Just Write. (Actually it’s Write and Re-write, but you get the idea.) There is little new stuff on how to write, and I’m sure if you’re a writer, you’ve read most of it, so stop reading so many books about writing and write something.

Still there are a few books on writing that are really worth owning AND reading. Continue reading →

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by Wes Pierce | February 26, 2012 · 3:32 pm

Mr. DeMille, I’m Ready for my Close-up

When James Joyce was a young man nominally attending medical school in Paris, and day-dreaming about his future literary fame, he once rather extravagantly promised his mother in a letter home that with his very first earnings he was going to buy her a new set of teeth. He never was able to live up to his promise. May Joyce died a little more than nine months later, at the advanced age of forty-four, and her son’s ship did not come in, so to speak, for another twenty years. Continue reading →

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Tagged as false teeth, James Joyce, literary fame

Aside

Audacity

Someone, I don’t remember who, suggested that I write a memoir. My first thought was that I don’t have the audacity to think that my life is important enough to write such a thing. I mean memoir–ooh,ooh! Still, I’m going to be sixty-one years old in couple of months. That’s right; sixty-one. Sixty-one isn’t that big of a number, but when you multiply sixty-one by three hundred and sixty-five, you get twenty-two thousand plus and that really is a big number. If I had learned how to write when I was six and from then on, kept a journal, I would have written over twenty thousand pages. What I’m trying to say here is that anyone; you, me, or the man in the moon, that is about to turn sixty-one can glean readable stuff out of twenty thousand pages. The upside is that I won’t be able to justify staring at the screen while whining that I can’t think of anything to write. Not with twenty-two thousand days behind me. I guess that’s the downside too.