Many of us write, but few of us create literature. Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting is literature. She had created literature before Chapter 1 of the book, Within a few words, Babbitt wrote volumes–in the Prologue. Within a few words, Tuck Everlasting had become more than a mere spattering of words. Natalie Babbitt said the following about…
Category: Descriptive Writing
Tuck Everlasting Chapter 2
Chapter 2 of Tuck Everlasting provides us with a beginning Character Study of Mae Tuck, just as is about to enter a new chapter of her life — a New Dawn. And so, at dawn, that day in the first week of August, Mae Tuck woke up and lay for a while beaming at the…
Free Memoir Writing Challenge Day 4 – Write in a Stream of Conscioiusness – Be Free
Yesterday, we talked about adding figurative language to writing. Today, I want you to suspend that process for a while. Today, we are going to begin writing a paragraph or two about November, and I want you to suspend your search for metaphors and similes for a while. In fact, I want you to suspend…
Harvest Your Past Memoir Challenge Day 3 – Using Similes and Metaphors to Empower Your Writing
A few days ago, I launched a free memoir writing challenge. I began by referring to Cynthia Rylant’s picture book In November. If you have not read that post yet, please do. In that post, I showed how Rylant had captured the essence of November in precious few words, and I asked the participants of…
Harvest Your Past Memoir Challenge – Write More to Write Better – Write to Heal Yourself
Before I tell you about today’s Memoir Writing Exercise, I want to share a true story with you. Today, I am a fairly prolific writer, but a few years ago, I couldn’t force myself to write. After my spirit had suffered several blows, I had become creatively mute. Depression had set in, and it seemed…
November is National Memoir Writing Month – Harvest Your Past Day 1 – Describe November
I write memoir for several reasons — least of which is to create a book of memoir. I write memoir to prime my writing pump. I write memoir to allow my writer’s voice to rise to the surface. I write memoir to connect with the author within myself. A few years ago, I coined the…
Church in My Garden – A Jacki Kellum Garden Journal Post for Autumn
The grasses are arching above the places where the perennials had bloomed only weeks ago. The Purple Fountain grass is darker than most of my garden now, which is still a lush, verdant green. Like icing on its cake, feathery festoons topple from the tips of each spire of the ornamental grass. Some of the…
How to Create a Garden Journal – More about the Nature Writer Dorothy Wordsworth’s Nature Writing
If you are wondering how to create a garden journal, the most obvious answer is: Write. As usual, however, obvious answers are hardly ever true answers. Many times, they are insults thrust toward what a true answer might be, and while I often tell journalists and writers to do just that — just write! Nature…
Setting in Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle
Painting of Rip Van Winkle by Jon Quidor – 1829 Washington Irving is considered the Father of the Short Story, which began as an American literary form. His delightful story Rip Van Winkle is thought to have been the first American short story. In 1916, W. Patterson Atkinson said the following about the short story: “A short…
Little Red Riding Hood Illustrated and Redtold by Trina Schart Hyman
[Red’s mother packed a basked and sent Red through the woods with it to her grandmother’s house.] Picture Book Writers Often Allow Their Illustrations to Create the Setting: Hyman’s Written Creation of the Setting of Grandmother’s House “‘Oh, it’s a good fifteen minutes farther into the wood. Her house is the one by those three…