By Vella Munn She was a tiny thing, several inches shorter than my 5’2” and maybe one hundred pounds. Her lovely white hair had been professionally styled, she had flawless skin and sparkling eyes, and her pink smock appeared to have just been washed and ironed. In contrast I looked like something the cat had…
Tag: the writing life
Listen to Your Heart
By Mark Stevens According to one website, the first draft of Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire was 1,400 pages long. 400,000 words. He has since whacked it down by one-third, but the projected 900-page novel drew a $2 million advance. The deal was announced a few weeks ago. First novel. Hallberg had previously published…
RMFW Spotlight on Shannon Baker, Treasurer
The RMFW Spotlight feature will introduce a few of our RMFW officers and volunteers. We started out with the board of directors, sat them in the hot seat, shined the bright light on them, and channeling our best inner Oprah, plugged them with a few questions. This week, we’ve interrogated our Treasurer, Shannon Baker. I…
Scrubbing the Grand Canyon Dam with a Toothbrush
By Mark Stevens Practice makes perfect. Yeah, right. I’ve been practicing this fiction thing for 30 years. Perfection? I can’t see it from here. A bit of joke, don’t you think? What is perfect when it comes to storytelling? You can put together a bunch of perfect sentences, but you don’t necessarily have a perfect…
Trying to Retire
By Carol Caverly I’ve been in the writing business for a long time, since the late fifties, I think. It’s been a long wondrous, fascinating journey. But as the years have passed, and the business changing completely (some for the better, some for the worse) the fire in the belly has disappeared, or perhaps worn…