#amwriting
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With my spouse away for two weeks, and completion of garden planting, I cleaned the house for summer and have been considering what I want to accomplish next with my writing. The second volume of memoir is with early readers whose assignment was to finish it before the end of summer. Memoir-writing is on the… Read more
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It took a lot of work to write the 5,808 posts on my several blogs since 2007. The thought of losing that work was unacceptable so I used the service Blog-to-Print to make paper copies along the way. They went out of business, and I haven’t been able to find a replacement that provides the… Read more
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I posted for 190 consecutive days and plan to pause for a while. Several things consumed my energy which needs recharging, something important to sustaining this bloggery. I plan to write more about process, although today I don’t know what to say. A writer has a distinct ecosystem from which words spring. Consideration of that… Read more
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I took back roads to the printer in Coralville to pick up advance reader copies of A Working Life, the second part of my autobiography. Getting to this point was a high water mark in the struggle to write it that began in 2010. There is a story in this book, one I hope finds… Read more
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Spring flowers bloom briefly. We take them in.Lilacs— their fragrance, soft on the eye.In the 1960s neighbors grew them everywhere— then spring gave way and they were gone.I planted lilacs in this place: a fresh start rooted in memory.Enough to share— now they line the street.Before summer’s heat, we pause, breathe them in again, and… Read more
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Following are opening paragraphs to a chapter of my work in progress, A Working Life. They begin a section on moving to Big Grove Township in 1993. It occurred to me the second paragraph should happen and I spent an inordinate amount of time crafting it. This opening stands up, I believe. Big Grove Township… Read more
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My current book is heading for home and each new day of editing brings a sense of impending completion. Being a career logistician, I consider process: By June, copies for early readers; then another edit; then fund-raising, printing, and distribution. Having written it, the work ahead is answering questions about whether it is the best… Read more
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This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind by Ivan Doig is exactly what the title suggests. Descriptions of the author’s rural Montana life are vivid in their presentation of the hard-scrabble ranching life in which Doig came up. Out of that challenging youth — farming, sheep herding, haying, rural community — he became… Read more
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Songbirds are arriving: sparrows, cardinals, blue jays, crows, woodpeckers, and more. In winter, geese dominated the lakes. Some remain year-round, but now they are joined by pelicans, gulls, and a variety of waterfowl moving through on the great migration. The number and variety of birds will grow in the weeks ahead. Spring is literally in… Read more
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Following is a description of how I spent the bicentennial in 1976 from my book An Iowa Life: A Memoir. I was on military leave, in between Officer Candidate School and Infantry Officer Basic Course. This year is the 250th birthday of America. I’m not feeling celebratory and wish I could go back to those… Read more
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