Excerpt from “Remembering Rosetta,” a yet to be published memoir. By Morgan St. James and Phylllice Bradner
Rosetta Lachman left this world just short of her ninety-seventh birthday. She was encouraged to write the first section of this “still in work” memoir when she was in her mid-eighties.
Rosett[......]
Archive > February 2010
Excerpt from “Remembering Rosetta” – Part 1
Mari Adkins – Interview
How old were you when you started writing?
I wrote my first ‘book’ at six and my first poetry at nine. The book has survived and is now buried in a memory box; the poetry, thankfully, long ago parted this earth. All through childhood, the creative arts including drawing, painting, sketching, and of [......]
Enjoy Poetry as Story
A story told in 100 or 200 words starts to read a lot like poetry. All of the excess thoughts have been eliminated. There is no room for wasted words when the count is so tight. To me, that is one of the advantages of good poetry over prose. Every word matters. It is a lot of fun.
A poem doesn’t hav[......]
Memoirs – Whether for Publication or for Yourself
Have you ever had the urge to write your life story as a keepsake for yourself or your family?
Whether you aspire to publication, or want to preserve memories for yourself or family members and friends, memoirs are priceless. Without them, the wonderful times and recollections of people along the w[......]
Art of Poetry
All any one knows for sure is that it must rhyme. That’s usually the first entry in a non-poet’s personal lexicon when they recognize something as being a poem. Of course, we know that a great deal of poetry does rhyme, but a lot of it doesn’t. You may be hard-pressed to find a poem tha[......]
The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 3
How do you portray an eighty-year-old woman who isn’t your garden variety grandmother? With flat narrative, or through vivid descriptions and attitudes. I chose to use an excerpt from one of my own books to illustrate this. We are introduced to Flossie Silver, a former vaudeville magician, in “A Cor[......]
Experience Poetry in a Musical Style
Poetry reacts on us through sound — pitch, volume, consonance, assonance, rhyme and cadence, as well as through the process of visual translation from print on page to a mind image. I have often told poets privately that they can increase the quality of their work in short order by doing sever[......]
The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 2
In this example, author Joan Del Monte takes the reader to a dim maze of rooms in a county office and a sleazy diner. She paints with her words as though she was putting brush to canvas. You not only feel it, but see it. This is the type of description to strive for if you want the reader to be imme[......]
Michelle Richmond – Interview
© Misty Richmond
Michelle, talk us through your daily writing routine.
I usually write for a few hours in the morning after dropping my son off at school. Because my work generally requires a good deal of research, my writing time frequently gets hijacked mid-process because I need to stop to look [......]
The Art of Drawing Word Pictures – Part 1
Narrative can be flat and as boring as a laundry list, or use many pieces of the scene to draw a word picture. The technique of painting a picture with words involves making it dimensional by using sounds, aromas, climate, emotions. That way, rather than a cardboard cutout, it gives the reader a fu[......]
