The decision to publish my second novel, Certain Liberties, should have given me some relief. Just making a decision lifted a burden of major proportions, but this next stage of creativity didn’t feel as liberating as I’d expected. “There’s still plenty of work you can do before we set the final draft,” my publisher said.… Continue Reading
Author Archives: Sidney Stark
Lone Voice
The final lines of a poem I read last week haunted me, as only certain references to the beauty and truth of nature can. The poem titled Night in the Mountains is by Heather Allenand. It came across my desk via the Writers’ Almanac on June 4, 2014. I’ve embedded a link here so you… Continue Reading
Defining Line
It’s a seductive idea, that there could be a ‘line in the sand’ marking an absolute transition from one thing to another. I suppose it’s the absoluteness that’s appealing in a world many have come to think of as murky and ambiguous. I was reminded of the power of that need for definition recently when… Continue Reading
Learning Love
Last week I read an article by David Brooks in ‘The Opinion Pages’ of the New York Times. If you click on the link I’ve embedded (above) in Mr. Brooks’ name, you’ll have the pleasure of reading it yourself. I wish you would; not because I spent time attaching it to this post, but… Continue Reading
Any Other Name
Don’t worry about names, Juliet says to Romeo. They don’t mean anything; or so I paraphrase that famous monologue of hers that Romeo overhears. She tells him a rose would smell as sweet no matter what its name, and he would still be the same man she loves with another patronymic; but would he be? I can’t… Continue Reading
Associations
Lately I’ve found myself paying a lot more attention to words. Of course that started in earnest when I returned to creative writing in a serious way. But I don’t mean just the words I or someone else uses to bring a scene or character to life, or even to give rise to their inner… Continue Reading