From Poets & Writers:

The new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published today. Here are a few of the approximately two thousand words and phrases making debuts: vuvuzela, geo-engineering, toxic debt, staycation, and cheeseball. http://at.pw.org/cFlqmC

I love discovering people’s work spaces. There’s something revealing about that place where a person goes to create.  And so I must thank Roger Feldman, and Kathy Hastings, for letting me into their creative spaces which I am happy to share with you.

Kathy Hasting's studio

Roger Feldman's space

 Squire Broel and Jeff Johnson’s studios in next post.

A travel show that profiles artists?  Patrick Pelham’s documentary Asking for Directions views the world through the eyes of practicing artists: writers, musicians, dancers, actors and visual artists. Artists from 10 countries give us a glimspe into their cultures and lives. We spent the weekend introducing Patrick to WA wines, bicycle polo and artists of Eastern WA. Yes, there really are some. Stay tuned for Susan Kimmel and Squire Broel.

Iphone photo of my little friend–the blob.

A screech owl was sitting in the hanging flower basket on our front porch this morning. I was two feet away from him before I noticed his feathery face staring straight at me. Now this same  felllow or one quite similar has been in our yard for three years. He used to roost on a tree limb over my car. He’d trill to me in the early morning when I left for work and I’d trill back.

Seems like a sign to me. Any wonder I write fantasy? The two eagles in Beyond the Door (Abrams/Amulet 2011) really do roost in our poplars every January and now this little guy with the feathery eyes appears. Expect to find him in a book one day.

Patrick in a boat

An island on the journey—-Just returned from Kindling Fest on Orcas Island and I’m already homesick for scattered friends. There’s homesick for place and homesick for people. Think I’m suffering from both. Great collection of friends, visual artitsts, musicians, dancers, writers and other thoughtful creative types. Download the podcasts.

Luci Shaw reading

“”I think all poetry is accessible in a certain sense if you spend enough time with it. Poems tend to have instructions for how to read them embedded in their language. I don’t think all poems need to be written in conversational language—those are often great poems but there should also be poems of incoherent bewilderment and muddled mystery.”

Love this quote posted on Poetry Daily from the spring issue of Verse Wisconsin, Wendy Vardaman interviewing Matthea Harvey.

I’ve spent the last few days editing and revising a battle scene. The scene isn’t a sweeping epic, just a four page battle told from the point of view of a young boy who has never been in a battle before. How hard can it be, I ask myself? Plenty! Good battle scenes are hard to write, especially for someone who doesn’t read many of them.  I have a confession to make: I often skip over battle scenes in books, hurrying to get to the place where the protagonist reflects or where there is dialogue with another character. In movies, battle scenes are often the places where I check out; battle scenes and really long car chases find me thinking about the guy’s bald head in front of me. So, how to keep readers like me engaged? Keep me tied to the protagonist.

A clue came from my editor Howard Reeves when he asked, “but he (my protagonist) didn’t really do much, did he?”

1. Your protagonist has to fight against real odds and the odds have to be great. She has to accomplish something–hacking, stabbing, slashing–of significance, so that when the battle is over and she hears “well fought” we, the readers, know it is deserved. You see, we are identifying with the protagonist and we want to feel like we’ve been heroic especially if it came at great cost, and even if we made lots of errors along the way.

2. Writers must choose a focus. Battles are  made  of many skirmishes. As writers we have to decide which ones to focus on. If we try to describe everything, the battle becomes overwhelming, readers lose focus, their eyes glaze over. Pick a few select times, slow down and let your character try to out-maneuver the giant, many legged toad.

3.  Think about the emotional load the scene carries. Battles need to have a purpose. Things need to change. Most importantly, the battle has to change your character. What emotion do you want your readers to take away from the scene? How does the battle move the story forward and how does it change the protagonist?

4. Point of view is critical in battle scenes. A tight point of view, first person or third person limited, lets readers experience the battle along with the protagonist. They will know what she is feeling: her doubts, her fears, her hopes. This keeps the reader engaged because it builds strong character identification.

5. The writer must know enough about the weapons and tactics of warfare to write a believable scene for his/her audience. I always have to ask for help here, but I do ask for help. I had no idea that boars never turn back; they fight to the death. Nor did I have any idea how many rounds of ammunition a Colt revolver could fire. But, and this is important for readers like me–don’t get carried away by all the technical details of warfare unless your audience demands and thrives on these. Know  your audience.

Hiking Badger Mountian at sunset with Brennan. My other reason was a text message away in MO.

If you live in the NW, you won’t want to miss this on  May 7, 8, 9,15,16 10am to 5pm.  My friend Kathy Hastings is one of the artists. Her encaustic work based on photographs of ships’ hulls is amazing.

Here’s a preview of Kathy’s work:

“Our state’s economy thrives on innovation,” says Susan Colitan in her opinion piece in the Seattle Times. This may be old news, especially in Seattle where innovative thinking drives the city, but what  we need to know is that innovative thinking doesn’t just happen. It often begins with arts education in the schools which helps to build creative thinkers in all disciplines.

“Creative thinkers make us stronger and more agile as companies, as communities — and as a country.”

The lovely editor Cheryl Klein has this quote on a recent blog post:

 ”The opposite of faith isn’t doubt. The opposite of faith is fear, cynicism, and despair.” — Rev. Herb Miller

A perfect follow on to Easter, and so is this, one of my favorite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

  Pied Beauty

    Glory be to God for dappled things—
        For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
            For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
        Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
            And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

    All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
        Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
            With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
    He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

                                                Práise hím.

As a writer, how do you stay immersed in the world your creating? Here’s what I do. Each book gets its own collage. Playing with the colors, textures, symbols from the narrative keeps me in the world of the story as I create it. Here’s a peek at the world of a new manuscript, soon to make its humble way into the world. It also keeps my hands busy when I want to check email obsessively or need a break from the computer screen.

Off to the land of poets, Columbia, Missouri. So much talent in one little place: Scott Cairns, Aliki Barnstone, Allison Smythe and Claire McQuerry. You can smell poetry as soon as you walk into town. Check out their work!