Photo Essay: Pumpkins

I'm back from the fabulous writers' conference but I haven't quite digested it all yet, and haven't quite adjusted to everyday life again, so since it's Halloween today, I figured it's high time to share my pumpkin photos, or it will be too late. On our way to Starved Rock two weeks ago, we stopped at Dollinger's Farm, and walking up to the farm you have this view (above), promising a great choice in pumpkins.

I get all excited at sights like this - which one, or which ones, shall we pick?

Another choice to make: Which bushel of Indian Corn?

Why does one even have to choose?

An accidental line-up of part of our crop - I just love how the colors jive!

My daughter's and son's handiwork.

Blog Mash Up: Submission Opportunities, Interesting Insights and Memoirs

Tracks in the snow on our cabin's deck this morning...

While I've been trying not to freeze (see photo) at the writers conference I'm attending in northern Virginia where it is snowing today, I've put together this little line up for you. Next week I hope to share some of the insights and ideas I'm still digesting from this conference.

Thanks to Poets & Writers, here's an excerpt from Joan Didion's new memoir Blue Nights (coming out November 1), read by Kimberly Farr. I loved The Year of Magical Thinking, so I can't wait to read her new memoir, although the topic of reading about her only daughter's death also scares me.

For those who were intrigued by the insight shared from our author Q&A with Sandra Beasley, here's a recent radio interview with her discussing her memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl.

One of the great powers of nonfiction is to show us a fellow human being's perspective from the inside, which is particularly fascinating in the case of a brain-damaged Russian WWII veteran in Alexander Luria's 1972 book The Man with a Shattered World: See related interview with Oliver Sacks @ Sentence First.

Submission opportunity: Booklength CNF manuscript contest @ Orphan Press

Interesting List of top literary magazines on the Every Writer's Resource blog. I'm not sure how he came up with the rankings, but it's interesting nonetheless.

And last but not least, wrapping up the topic of submissions, here are some Insights from an editor after three months on the job.

Greetings from the Potomac River

Greetings from the misty banks of the Potomac River where I am at a writers' conference. More detailed reports are found on Nancy's blog but I do hope to report some good tidings as well. For now I will enjoy a break from the logistics of everyday family life and hang out with old and new writing friends.

Photo Essay: Hiking Starved Rock

With the weather turning nicer late last week, we jumped at the chance and did our outing to Starved Rock State Park (another item on my fall list!). I hope these pictures give you an idea why we love this canyonland, a two-hour drive from Chicago.

We hiked the east end of the park, which is less frequented. Here's the end of Ottawa Canyon (with my son for good measure).

Looking up from the bottom of Ottawa Canyon.

The pool at the end of lichen-encrusted Kaskaskia Canyon (with child in motion) must have been a great swimming hole before it became a state park (where swimming is prohibited), and before all those logs fell in.

Most of the hike at the eastern end of the park is like this, along the bluffs high above the Illinois River, until you pass Owl Canyon where stairs lead down to the water's edge.

Closer to the water now.

Walking into LaSalle Canyon.

Despite the recent rains, most of the canyons were dry where usually you'd find at least a little trickle of a waterfall.

After two hours I must say I was feeling my legs! It was a good four hour hike altogether.

Somebody lives here, I'm sure!

Fall in the House

The weather has been nasty here in Chicago: rain, blustery winds and temperatures in the 40s, so we've been hanging around at home. Thankfully, I brought the beauty of fall into the house from our trip to the orchard.

When I bring home a bunch of treasures, I plop them down wherever I can, and I often find that that was just the right spot. As in the case of this big fat bunch of mums, which has been on the kitchen counter ever since, with a paper plate slid under the pot to catch any moisture from watering. The mums go so well with the bowl and the bananas that live on the counter.

Some arranging of these mini-pumpkins and gourds was required, however. First they sat on my son's desk in the dining room where they kept falling over each other, so I finally took the time to organize them on this tray on the window sill.

My daughter and I are infatuated with gourds. They had a gigantic bin of them at the County Line Orchard, and we could have bought the whole lot. In the end we picked a few green ones to arrange together, in addition to the more colorful ones in the assembly above.

I'll leave you with this more cheerful picture from a few days ago, when it was still sunny outside: While carrying up groceries, I was fascinated by the mingling of the scattered leaves and the lines of the railing's shadow on the steps.

Apple Picking: How to Keep Apples Fresh

I've made good on one item on my fall list and went apple picking. We came home with more than 60 pounds of apples! So, how to keep them fresh? Thankfully, many years ago, a cashier at the County Line Orchard, where we always go, told me how to keep apples fresh for weeks:

Place apples in Ziploc bags along with a moist paper towel, seal and keep in the fridge. We have found that they last well into December that way!

People often ask what we do with all the apples - nothing really, we eat them! Most of the apples we pick tend to be smaller than the ones you get at the grocery store, and they are therefore perfect for the kids' school lunches. So for the next two months we don't have to worry about the fruit serving in the brown bag.

Sandra Beasley on How to Achieve Balance between Research and Personal Story

My Advanced Memoir students and I were fortunate to host the lovely Sandra Beasley, author, most recently, of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl, for an author Q&A earlier this month. Don't Kill the Birthday Girl is primarily a memoir of growing up with, and learning to live with, severe food allergies, but it also offers many practical insights into the medical and physical aspects of food allergies, and society's approach to dealing with them.

While the book contains a lot of technical terms and information, the narrative never gets bogged down with all the research that Beasley clearly put into it, as the author holds a conversational tone that keeps the reader engaged. One of my students asked her how she managed to achieve a balance between research and personal story.

"I had a formula," she said. "I told myself that each chapter would be either two parts story and one part research, or one part story and two parts research. Looking at each chapter as made up of three parts helped me immensely, and I was able to achieve this balance for almost all chapters in the book."

What a practical approach! And spoken as the true poet Sandra is - she is used to measuring her words, so why not measure her chapters?

Bilingual in More Than One Way

Chunky sweaters are all the rage this fall, and a display of shawl-collared knobby jackets reminded me of one I knit when I was a teenager, when my friends and I would knit in class to keep from falling asleep. We used to compete on who could tackle the most complicated pattern.

I look at those "in" sweaters and it makes me want to knit another. Out of thick multi-colored yarn, perhaps? That sends me dreaming of yarn catalogs and knitting magazines, and then I am thinking about how I could find a German pattern online. Because the problem is: I can't decipher American knitting patterns. I learned knitting in Germany, mainly from my grandmother, and apparently, once you know how to knit in one language, you can pretty much figure out what those abbreviations in a knitting pattern's instructions mean in that language. Figuring out how to read instructions in another language is an entirely different thing.

I've gotten as far as figuring out that a knit stitch in English corresponds to the German "rechts," and a purl to "links." But that's as far as I've gotten. Forget crochet patterns, I don't even know the terms for the basic crochet stitches in English. I am probably too lazy to really wrap my head around learning another knitting or crocheting language. Because that's what it is: another language.

I'd rather figure out a pattern by looking closely at the picture of a knitted garment in an American knitting magazine, and going through several tryouts before I get my sample to somewhat match the picture. I'm skilled enough to be able to figure out how much yarn I will need, and how many stitches to cast based on a rough pattern I outline for myself. I've completed several nice knitting and crocheting projects that way. If my knitting habit weren't so erratic (pretty much confined to the colder months), and subscriptions to German knitting magazines weren't so expensive, I'd probably be importing German knitting and crocheting projects. When I visit Germany, I always hit a yarn shop or two, which can actually be found in all major department stores, and are not necessarily speciality shops as they are here. All that effort could, of course, be avoided if I learned the American language of knitting, and more dauntingly, crocheting.

Over the years I have realized that moving countries entails much more than getting comfortable in another country's everyday language because there will be more than one language to learn. If you move from Continental Europe to the U.S. like I did, you have to learn, for example, a new language for temperature, and I am proud to say I am bilingual in Fahrenheit and Celsius. I am also bilingual in meters and inches, but amazingly I am not bilingual in square feet. If you tell me your apartment has 800 square feet, I cannot visualize what that means. Square meters are in my blood; I know what 45 square meters feel like because that was the size of my grandmother's apartment, and I know that 1000 square meters are a big yard because that's what I had to mow as a kid.

The way I knit: yarn wrapped around left index finger.

There is something physical to some of these "languages," something you need to have experienced for a long time, with your body, in order to understand it. Like inhabiting a space, or twisting yarn around your index finger like I do in order to knit. Americans don't do that, they somehow use their left hand (I think?) to lay the yarn over the needle. As I was saying, it's a different language I haven't grasped (literally) because I've got another one that works for me.

Literature in the Making: Rewriting

I've spent the last few days reviewing student manuscripts, and I have to share what a joy it is to witness literature in the making. Not that I don't try to create my own literature, but that's a different thing because with my own writing I'm in the trenches. It's hard to see my own work from a distance, and to appreciate its form until I have had some time away from it.

Working with students lets me observe and participate in the process of creation, and even lets me prod here and there. Some of my students have qualms about submitting the same manuscript again, but I love to see how, with all the feedback from our group, a piece of writing takes shape.

I've been going over the fourth revision of what promises to be a stunning lyrical essay from a student who never before revised anything. What, she said, would it say about her writing if we all still didn't get what she was trying to say even after she rewrote it? She should not have worried. I have been beyond thrilled when she finally dared to revise. Now she's committed to the process, and I am just plain happy that I nudged her in that direction.

It's fine to put out first draft after first draft, but at some point it is time to rewrite. Whether you are in a workshop or not, feedback from readers always helps to see your work more clearly, and distance from your own writing does as well. Because it is, in most cases, through honing and reshaping, i.e. through rewriting, that we figure out what a piece of writing can really become, and what it is really about.

Write Your Story and Publish It: One of my Students Shares her Journey

A story might catch you unaware but if you stick with it, it might lead somewhere! Congratulations to my longtime student Diane Hurles who stuck with her story through many rewrites and saw it published in Wisdom Has a Voice. She shares her inspiring journey from journalist to creative writer on the StoryStudio Chicago Blog.

What's in your Pocket?

Blogging, I have realized, is also a journey of self discovery, of appreciating that perhaps the most ordinary things really aren't that ordinary.

When I sifted through the spoils from our road trip, half of what I brought back were pieces of nature, and I've realized since that I do this all the time. Take, for instance, the contents of my coat pockets: In almost every one you will find at least one small stone, usually a round one that I picked up along the beaches of Lake Michigan. I like rubbing it between my fingers, savoring the texture of its surface.

Then I remembered that my mother always has Tic Tac Mints in her coat pockets. When on occasion I slip into one of my mother's coats, my hands will soon be playing with one of those Tic Tacs, and I can literally feel that that coat is hers.

So I started thinking about how our coat pockets are little manifestations of who we are, and this weekend, while picnicking out in the country, I emptied the pockets of my field jacket, to really look at what I carry around:

• a glove (not the practical working gloves that should go with a field jacket, but rather a hint of my urban life: thin and knitted, with a buttoned cuff and ruffles around the edges)
• a crumpled grocery list (the practicalities of life are never far)
• some coins (ditto)
• an acorn (I love those guys; too bad they usually fall apart as they dry)
• a piece of seaglass (so wonderfully smooth!)
• a shard (found on the beach for its cool colors)
• five small stones (the one with the porous surface is the best for rubbing)

I picked up some of the stones to take home, and then found it more comfortable to have them in my pockets. I also love how different things live in my pockets while the coats are out of season, waiting to be rediscovered when my hands slip into them on that first frosty morning in the fall.

So the question is: What's in your pockets, and what does it tell you about yourself?

Writing Exercise: Color List - Orange

What would fall be without pumpkins? So October's color is orange.

For the uninitiated, the idea here is to come up with ways to evoke orange without mentioning the color itself because one of the challenges in writing effective descriptions is getting the color just right. Each month on this blog we work on one color, so far we’ve done red, green, pink, blue, and yellow. So help me here to come up with nouns and adjectives that bring orange to mind. Here's my start:

basketball
butternut squash
carrot
coral
oranges
marigold
persimmon
pumpkin
tangerine
tiger lily
traffic cones