Category Archives: spirituality
Q&A: Dinty W. Moore on Buddhism, creativity, kindness & taming the ego
Listen to where the writing wants to take you. Understand that the writing itself will often provide far richer material than your logical, predictable mind. Even more “intellect-driven” writing—for instance, a dissertation—can benefit from the cognitive leaps that occur when … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, discovery, REVIEW, revision, spirituality, working method
Review/Q&A: Alethea Black on ‘Lovely,’ faith & fiction, essays & cutting to bone
I can only speak for myself, but there’s something about writing at night that feels . . . sneaky. There’s an outlaw quality to it, combined, oddly enough, with a sense of being safe. It has an anaerobic, subterranean feel; … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, Dillard—Saint Annie, fiction, MFA, poetry, REVIEW, revision, spirituality, teaching
Emerson meets ‘A Girl Named Zippy’
So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean? Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the … Continue reading
Showalter: memoir is a ‘radical act’
My interview with Shirley Hershey Showalter concludes with her discussion of her writing process and of her vision for the potential for memoir, a “radical act,” to build peace in the world. Q: You prepared for writing a memoir by … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, memoir, poetry, spirituality, working method
Finding her memoir’s ‘topic sentence’
I want to prepare for the hour of my death by living one good day at a time. And I want to help others to do the same. —Shirley Hershey Showalter’s mission statement Shirley Showalter is an essayist, blogger, speaker, … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, electronic publishing, memoir, spirituality, working method
Shirley Showalter, ubuntu & memoir
Become an observer of your own creative process. It will help you uncover where you “sing” and where your voice falls flat. When you lose track of time and are not thinking about yourself at all but rather about your … Continue reading
Filed under electronic publishing, memoir, MFA, NOTED, spirituality, teaching, working method
Christopher Hitchens, God & me, pt. 3
O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened … Continue reading
Filed under evolutionary psychology, existentialism, MY LIFE, spirituality
Christopher Hitchens, God & me, pt. 2
An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of … Continue reading
Filed under evolutionary psychology, existentialism, MY LIFE, spirituality
Christopher Hitchens, God & me, pt. 1
That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and … Continue reading
Filed under evolutionary psychology, existentialism, MY LIFE, spirituality
Virginia Woolf’s ‘moments of being’
The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river. Then one sees through the surface to the depths. In those moments I find one of my greatest … Continue reading
Filed under memoir, NOTED, spirituality
