I'm always thrilled when The Company They Keep gets an enthusiastic review. But some reviews make me want to jump and shout "YES! You get it!! That's what this book is all about!!!" That was my reaction to this review recently posted by author John Adcox on his blog:
In Good Company: The Company They Keep By [...]
I'm a Phil Keaggy fan from way back. I can't find my tee shirt from the "Love Broke Thru" tour, but I sure remember sitting in the third row on the left side in that concert, feeling awed by the music and amazed that anyone could coax a guitar to sing like that. Since those [...]
I love Eric Carle, the author and artist behind classic children's books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I stumbled across his blog and really like these thoughts about creativity, time, seeds, and hatchlings:
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Seed that Grows into a Story
Sometimes ideas for my books seem to burst into bloom. But often the seed of the idea [...]
Did you take Freshman Writing or First Year Composition, or some kind of writing course when you first went to college? Was it a great experience? Too easy? Too hard?
Was it even clear to you what you were supposed to be getting out of that class?
As I am getting ready to teach another group of first [...]
A colleague called me the other day. He offered to buy me a latte if I could help him figure out what was so bad about passive voice. I met him at the coffee shop on campus.
I sipped my latte and explained that passive voice does not mean that your sentence is long and dangly, lacks action, uses [...]
I love practically everything about the movie Julie and Julia, but there is one rather annoying loose end. It pops up in the scene where Julie gets a call from a reporter who is covering Julia Child’s birthday party. He tells Julie that Julia doesn’t think much of her blog or her cooking. Then he [...]
A book project that takes four times as long as you expect.
A book collaborator who drags her feet; another who carries the day.
The strain on your marriage because your book has become an obsession.
The phone call from your mother because she is trying to figure out exactly what it is that you do.
The juggling act of living your life [...]
y sabatical travels have ranged far and wide. One of my best trips was a short visit to Oxford last February. While I was there, I spent most of my time at the Bodleian, studying Tolkien materials.
I also presented a paper to the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society. Officers Brendan Wolfe and Judith Tonning offered a [...]
Several months ago, I wrote about my ceramic chicken, the one I use to store projects that are on hold. Sometimes I am waiting to hear from a publisher, sometimes a piece is just plain stuck, sometimes I need to gather additional materials, sometimes another deadline interrupts. Sometimes I just give up. In all of [...]
I have a love/hate relationship with appearances on talk radio. I love the energy and spontaneity of radio, love the chance to interact with listeners, love to talk about the things I am passionate about, like C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and creativity, and community.
On the other hand, not everyone who knows how to host a dynamic radio [...]