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…
Category: Descriptive Writing
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…
Description of Autumn Leaves by Winthrop Packard in Wood Wanderings
AMONG AUTUMN LEAVES WOOD WANDERINGS BY WINTHROP PACKARD ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES COPELAND Published in 1910 THE deep woods catch all the rich colors of the autumn sunsets in their foliage. The dull reds and the vivid ones, the maroons and the scarlets, the golden yellows and the wondrously soft and mellow shades of tan and…
How to Create Stronger Settings for Your Picture Books – Visualize the Details of the Story
in my debut book The Donkey’s Song, I wrote very few words about the setting. That book has 150 words, and I did not feel that the lyrical, magical tone of the book could bear a lot of “spelling things out.” But as I wrote the book, I was fully aware of where that story was…
#14DayPBChallenge – Day 4 – February 2023 – How Metaphor and Simile Added Spice to Writing
First, let’s talk about what metaphors and similes are. A Metaphor is a comparative device that helps us better understand the writer’s meaning. A metaphor merely says that one thing IS another thing. The reader is left responsible for deciphering the metaphor. “A man is a lion” is a metaphor. Obviously, a man is not really a…
How to Create a Reading Journal on Your Blog – Free Tags for You to Use on Your Blog Posts
In this post, I am showing you how I used my blog to share my #ReadtoWrite journal on my WordPress Blog, using the following free-to-copy and use tags. This charts my reading on December 26, 2022: Pastoral Day – William Hamilton Gibson – pages 19-26. Sharp Eyes: A Rambler’s Calendar – Gibson – pages 248-252….
Describe the Land around Your Childhood Home
Your journal assignment for today is to describe the terrain or the countryside of the area around your childhood home. When I say describe, I mean just that. Provide sentences that capture how the countryside looked. Don’t just say: “I grew up 40 miles south of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Fort Smith has a population of…