Category Archives: Writing

Sons and Mothers

Sons and Mothers

“A mother is a son’s first true love. A son is a mother’s last true love.” ~Denzel Washington

Incubating longer than any other book I’ve ever written, I’ve finally reached the ending of my first draft after years of research and a terrific struggle to write my latest novel. Much of the delay was due to the lethargy of the pandemic, as well as procrastination about the paucity of time and abundance of new projects leering at me from my imagination. So, this novel’s crawl is all my fault. However, now that I’m at the story’s end, I’m learning some very intriguing things, and I sense that the extra time it’s taken has a lot to do with my discoveries. I could come up with a long list of things that had to be rewritten many times along the way, but my key discovery is that I didn’t know what the story was about or who the true protagonist was.

Now that’s odd, since the story came to me alone and wasn’t inspired by anyone else’s idea. Many more people have jumped on the bandwagon since I began this project, with biopics and new musicals all featuring the 18th Century polymath French Mulatto who played the violin like Paganini, wrote music like Haydn or Stamitz, wielded a sword and rode like a Musketeer and taught students like the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. When I started my project, no one seemed to have heard of him, but Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges has become almost a household name in the six or so years since I’ve been researching his exploits. Clearly, I missed my moment of unique discovery!

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Burdens of Privilege

Burdens of Privilege

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” —Plutarch It was over a decade ago that I sat in my first writers’ workshop at the Stonybrook Writers’ Conference. The almost round tables were configured to promote emotional connectivity and support, all good things when one’s writing is being… Continue Reading

Women of Ingenuity

Women of Ingenuity

“My failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.” Ulysses S. Grant In true one-thing-leads-to-another fashion, an interview online recently with Drew Gilpin Faust about her memoir Necessary Trouble, led me to another book she’d written, Mothers of Invention. Having grown up in the South herself, Faust has a unique perspective on the idiosyncrasies… Continue Reading

The Artist’s Prerogative

The Artist’s Prerogative

“…and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”~ Pico Iyer We’ve heard an enormous amount recently about the pandemic of loneliness sweeping much of the world today. For the most part, the reasons for it seem to stem from the breakdown of community, and therefor human connections.… Continue Reading

Warp and Weft

Warp and Weft

“We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone… and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.”—Sandra Day O’Connor For many years, I’ve considered layering in writing as a process much akin to that in the visual… Continue Reading