Annie Dillard and essay

Poets & Writers issue of March-April 2016 has a pleasant feature, "Such Great Heights," covering the career of Annie Dillard and celebrates her "masterful essays."

Take time to enjoy reading of her life and work, in this piece spanning about six terrific pages.

Such Great Heights: A Profile of Annie Dillard 

The article itself is in print only, not online. Stop by your local library if you are not a P & W subscriber.

David Brooks on soft skills

In the Sept. 5, 2015, New York Times, eloquent David Brooks again has an interesting column titled 'The New Romantics.'

Consider the burgeoning use of technology in use today: classrooms, medicine, commerce, even friendship. Yet Brooks sees a door opening to a possible romantic rebirth. Although computers now do much of our work for us, it is possible to consider that this gives us time to turn mundane tasks over to technology, and enjoy more time fir the relational tasks of life, including those that require accountability, authority, or roles such as being a caregiver. These are not transactional jobs, but relational ones, best left to humans, and requiring judgment, empathy, communication, compassion, and courage. The world still needs us!

Read Brooks' column, The New Romantics.

"Modern Love" column editor

The New York Times "Modern Love" column on Feb. 8, 2015 may surprise you. Written by the column's editor, Daniel Jones, it explains at length what does and doesn't work for a "Modern Love" pitch, a highly coveted essay market. Take a look, as Jones analysis of submitted essays causes him to consider the concept of good writing. His response is beneficial for all writers.

There is also a notice of a call for stories from college students, with a $1,000 award to the winning writer, for an essay to run in May 2015.

Oh, to write like David Brooks...

In a recent New York Times op-ed page essay, David Brooks wrote about an interesting passage in a biography of Isaiah Berlin. It was in Leningrad in 1945 when Berlin was invited to meet a pre-revolutionary poet, twenty years past his age. The next four paragraphs are a mini-movie, as Brooks teases us to read on and on. Let me just share the beginning line of each paragraph, like so...

Berlin was taken to her apartment, and met a woman still beautiful and powerful, but wounded by tyranny and the war...

By midnight, they were alone, sitting on opposite ends of her room...

By four in the morning, they were talking about the greats...

Deeper and deeper they talked, baring their souls...

In the next seven paragraphs of this thin newspaper column, Brooks discusses how spiritually ambitious people can experience that sort of life-altering conversation, and the "ideal of a certain sort of bond... that happens once or twice in a lifetime."

Please read David Brooks' essay, and enjoy the opportunities for real communication among friends or strangers who become friends, and perhaps capture "the numinous magic of that night" in your own life.

Travel Writing on Location

Travel and writing go hand in hand. The favorite pen, time alone in a cafe, late nights in the glow of your laptop screen. Travel writing is getting paid to research and write... in other words, to do what we love, all while enjoying a break from routine and finding surprises waiting around every corner when we travel.

Travel Writing on Location is offering a terrific opportunity:  Native American & Spanish Heritage in New Mexico: Santa Fe. May 2-6, 2013. Details on this and more workshops for writers can be accessed at their comprehensive site: http://travelwritingonlocation.com/writing-workshop-in-taos-santa-fe-nm/

As I frequently tell you, "There's never been a better time to be a writer." So, when you see a good opportunity to travel, take a writing workshop and return home with new skills, find a way to make it happen!  I'll see you after the conference!

Memoir - Essay contest

So if NANOWRIMO doesn't suit your style, how about a fabulous Essay - Memoir contest? This is sponsored by The Writer  magazine and Gotham Writer's Workshop. 
Here are the details.

Entry fee is just $10 and the judge is Lee Gutkind, founder and editor of Creative Non-Fiction.  Ready???