It’s a quiet morning in the tall pines. Six inches of snow have fallen, and the breezes of the past few days have died down. Oregon juncos – like Alaskan ones but with peachy patches on their breasts – gather in small flocks outside the window. A bright varied thrush rests in a high branch …
With Gratitude to the Writing Spirit, and to You Read More »
When I was considering what to write for this blog post, I thought about what superpowers playwriting can share with other writing genres. One major difference between most forms of writing and playwriting is that a play is incomplete on the page. As a novel requires a reader and their imagination to participate in consuming …
Spectacle and the Art of Blowing Things Out of Proportion by Carey Seward Read More »
“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.” ― Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu was born sometime in the 970s to an aristocratic Japanese family. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, considered to be possibly the world’s first novel. In The Tale of Genji, …
In many popular books on the craft of writing, a common pattern emerges: the reader, writer, and protagonists are purposely defaulted to male. John Vorhaus in The Comic Toolbox writes, “A lot of times I call these people he, though of course I mean both he and she. Language lags behind social change, and the …
Whether you are pro-Amazon or hate the powerful marketing juggernaut, you have to admit it the company is the master of sales, delivery, and marketing of everything from books to bras to bonbons. Now Amazon has introduced the serialized novel as part of their Kindle bookshelf. It’s called Kindle Vella and it allows the reader …
As the year turns in Alaska, outdoor rituals mark shifting seasons. Picking berries, harvesting gardens, splitting wood, first frost… Upon my family’s return from an overdue trip to Cape Cod, I’ve been thinking about how vacation fits into this puzzle. And what a boon it can be for a writer. For many, vacation is a …
As writers one of the key elements of our craft that we all know (and sometimes love) is the revision process. For the uninitiated, revising is normally done after the first draft of a story is written. It’s where the writer goes all the way back to the beginning of the story and makes changes …
First published in 2004, Tidal Echoes is an annual Southeast Alaskan literature and arts journal administered by the University of Alaska Southeast. Although it originated as a university-specific journal only accepting submissions from students at UAS Juneau, the journal now publishes work from all over the southeast region. Over the last 17 years, Tidal Echoes …
Tidal Echoes: Literary Journal by Shaelene Moler Read More »
The first opinion piece I ever wrote for a newspaper was published on April 15, 1969. Unfortunately, it was disguised as a news story. Not too cleverly, I should admit. I was a freshman at Purdue University, in conservative Indiana (my oops for taking the scholarship and not thinking about much else). The dorm had …
I have a confession to make: I never wanted to write a book. Individual stories, yes. But books (novels), never. Until fairly recently. Over all the years I’ve spent in writing classes and at writing conferences, I’ve tried to keep secret my embarrassing lack of interest in writing books. My lack of ambition. Year after …
Confessions of a Late Bloomer by Richard Chiappone Read More »
