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Category Archives: Writing
BOOK: “The Writing Life” by Annie Dillard
The Writing Life by Annie DillardMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher site – Harper
This essay lays out what it takes to write through discussion of Dillard’s first-hand experience writing. Issues discussed include the ability to not only hack away at one’s work but sometimes to wholly abandon it to restart from a blank page, the time it takes, and the need for a space of one’s own and solitude. The final chapter takes a twist, telling the story of a stunt pilot who lived in the same area as Dillard, a story that I took as an allegory for the writing life.
I’d highly recommend this book for writers, but also for those who like to read well-crafted writing.
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BOOK: “Kindred Spirits” by Edward C. Sellner
Kindred Spirits: Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, and Zen by Edward C. SellnerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site — Monkfish Books
Release Date: July 28,2026
This book intertwines the biographies of two prominent 2oth century American authors, Beat novelist Jack Kerouac and Trappist monk Thomas Merton. Besides the two writers’ general interest in Eastern philosophy and mysticism and the fact that they had broadly overlapping lifespans, I wouldn’t have placed them in the same basket (despite having read works by each and found both writers’ works enjoyable – though in distinct ways.) However, Sellner dives down into other points of commonality — e.g. Columbia University educated, lifelong Catholics, love of drink, ladies’ men (at some point, at least,) desire for a hermetic existence, etc. Of course, another important commonality was dying young, Kerouac at 47 and Merton at 53.
This book is a fascinating look at two authors who forever changed American perception of Zen Buddhism and Eastern philosophy more generally, though who did it through the lens of Catholicism. At its heart, however, it’s the tale of the struggles of two men to find something, something elusive yet for which they each felt a strong compulsion, something which even successes only left them hungering for more.
If you’re interested in the lives of writers, this book is an excellent read and I’d highly recommend it. Regardless of what you might feel about the connective tissue between them, both of these writers had an interesting life.
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PROMPT: Lose Yourself
Reading, walking, writing, swimming, thinking, and epic rap battles. You’ve only got one shot…
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PROMPT: Autobiography
Daily writing prompt
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
“And that’s how you do that!”
(I’m told that in medias res is the ideal narrative approach for memoirs.)
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BOOK: “Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway” by Jeffrey Meyers
Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway by Jeffrey MeyersMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Website – LSU Press
I enjoyed this approach to biography. Instead of telling Hemingway’s life story chronologically or even via some other form of overarching arc, Meyers gives us forty-three chapters that each shine a light on a different facet of Hemingway. In many cases, these facets are Hemingway’s relationships to other people: writers, artists, wives, and other personalities. In other cases, the facets are events or concepts, such as his suicide, war, achievements, etc.
This approach can, on occasion, lead to repetition, but I find repetition that is not overbearing to be useful in taking in key information.
If you are interested in what made Hemingway tick, I’d highly recommend that you read this book.
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PROMPT: Perfect Space
Daily writing prompt
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
Quiet, simple, and in other ways not distracting.
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BOOK: “The Serious Guide to Joke Writing” by Sally Holloway
The Serious Guide to Joke Writing: How to Say Something Funny about Anything by Sally HollowayMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Google Books Page
This book presents a textual version of the author’s joke writing seminar. It offers a few techniques for joke writing that are informed by the premises that: 1.) jokes exist out in the world for one to find — rather than to create; 2.) Anyone who is funny with his or her friends can be a funny joke writer, BUT not without effort. That effort comes in the form of training oneself to look at words and phrases in unconventional ways and in applying (largely mechanical) processes to coax or wheedle the jokes out of the ether. I say “largely mechanical” because there is a chapter on stream-of-consciousness joke writing, but the heart of the book is a process called joke-web building that is a step-by-step approach to finding humor wherever it may hide.
The book alternates practical and “theoretical” chapters. The “theoretical” chapters are mostly about the psychology that gets in one’s way as a joke writer and the ways around it. That is, those parts deal with the value of breaks and the need to manage anxiety. The practical chapters explain the procedures and have Q&A style troubleshooting sections in addition to a description of the process.
I found the book to be interesting and a quick read. Some of the procedures seem a bit tedious, but they do produce results. It may be possible to streamline them to one’s own situation.
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PROMPT: Writing
EPIPHANIES.
But, if you think about it, writing is miraculous. In the scheme of gifts that nature grants, it is way out beyond left field. Encoding ideas and images in simple characters in a way that can evoke emotional or cognitive responses in readers is kind of a superpower. (As is reading.)
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PROMPT: 30 Things
1.) love; 2.) a glorious turn of phrase; 3.) discovery; 4.) walking; 5.) swimming; 6.) stumbling upon an interesting and / or novel idea; 7.) movement; 8.) travel; 9.) street food; 10.) quiet; 11.) health; 12.) recognition that when things are at their very worst, they must get better — because everything is impermanent; 13.) an intense stretch; 14.) Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass;” 15.) undiscovered country; 16.) the hanging moment; 17.) a mystery-laden world; 18.) a moment of flow; 19.) a mountain path; 20.) a clear stream; 21.) the way of non-adversariality; 22.) a thing stripped to its simplest form; 23.) the moment breath turns the tide; 24.) animals being animals; 25.) a brief instant of free fall; 26.) the recognition that something that used to cause me angst or fear no longer does; 27.) when body, movement, and the world fall into alignment; 28.) first contact with someplace / something new; 29.) connection; 30.) the first sign that the struggle is paying off.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 