Linda M. Hasselstrom's Blog, page 4

Cowboy Poetry vs Free Verse

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In honor of National Cowboy Poetry Week (April 21-27, 2019), I am reprinting this blog, which was originally published July 30, 2012 on my website’s blog page.

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Recently [July, 2012] I presented a workshop at the combined annual meeting of the Dakota Cowboy Poets Association and the Western Writers Group, held at Slim McNaught’s house in New Underwood, South Dakota.

My workshop was With the Net Down: Do You Dare to Write Without Rhyme? Briefly, I discussed the differences betwe...

Learning to Breathe

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Often I take a hot bath to soak the kinks out of sore and damaged body parts and ease my mind. Finally, after a long and complicated day, I have the kind of solitude and quiet that encourages and enables writing. If I’m too tired to think, I lean back and inhale. Recently, I realized that when I’m busy, I sometimes do not breathe.

Oh I breathe enough to sustain life: little sips of air between rushing here and there. But I do not inhale so that the air flows through my nost...

Tiny Bouquets

April is National Poetry Month
This blog was originally published September 27, 2011 on my website.

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[image error]This has been a busy week; I read and commented on a 140-page manuscript, planned three retreats, made 6 pots of tomato sauce, worked on a home page message, and read six mystery books as well as the usual three meals a day, watering the garden, writing a few letters and no doubt a few chores I’ve forgotten. Sometimes it seems as though the world keeps spinning faster and faster.

When...

Language That Makes Me Grouchy

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Lately I’ve found myself snarling when I see language usages that are blatantly incorrect. And I see them everywhere, every day. As a responsible writer, I feel it’s my duty to call attention to these mistakes.

I most often explode when reading one of my local newspapers, The Rapid City Journal, for which I was once an intern as well as a regular staffer. I worked and learned during the reign of the late Jim Kuehn, who would never have put up with any of these insults to the language we were...

What Are You Willing to Do?

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Every now and then, despite my advanced years and practice in ignoring “promotion” and its requirements and details, I happen to notice some new trend in self-advertising, and spend several seconds-or-minutes-that-feel-like-hours with my mouth hanging open that someone could and would do “that” to try to get people to read their books.

Then I hit myself on the head with one of the 17 books I’ve written while mostly ignoring that advice, and get on with whatever I’m doing that I enjoy more th...

Monitoring Your Time

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I mentioned this exercise in a journal-writing workshop I just taught for the Hermosa Arts and History Association (HAHA) on Saturday, March 16th, 2019.

If you take one week to monitor where you spend your time you will discover what your current priorities are, even if they are unintentional. Once you realize where your time is going, you can choose your priorities and make changes in how you spend your time so that you can accomplish your goals– in this case, writing goals.

Here’s how:

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Book Remarks: Prairie Fires

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Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caroline Fraser. (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Co., 2017).

From the ironic epigraph to the 626th page, this monumental work held my attention. I’d hoped to skim a few pages, since I’ve read all of Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” books and know a great deal about her. Caroline Fraser’s work provides not only a deep study of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, but a fuller understanding of the entire prairie pioneer expe...

Build a Book with Journal Entries

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If you begin the habit of writing in your journal every day, you can lead yourself into writing a book– not quite painlessly.

If you sit at the computer and think:

I am going to
write a book

you may terrify yourself with the monumental nature of the task.

Instead, resolve to write a journal entry every day. Let your book build itself.

In order to make this a habit, you should choose to write at the same time. And because our days so easily fill with tasks, you might be most successful if the...

Neighborliness

Synchronicity! On the day I took notes for this commentary, Joan Bachman, who has been a writing guest at Windbreak House, wrote in her blog just what I was thinking:

Neighborliness doesn’t seem to hit the papers as often as hate-speech and noisy people demonstrating against something.

You might not get as much attention by being neighborly as you would by marching in the streets screaming, but you’ll feel better, and you’ll improve the lives of others. And you don’t have to make any signs.

F...

Book Remarks: How to Cuss in Western

How to Cuss in Western (and other missives from the high desert).
Michael P. Branch. (Boulder: Roost Books, 2018)

[image error]Because I have always—well, since I was four years old—loved and respected my local library, I do not write in books unless I own them, and intend to keep them.

Therefore, when I own a book, the page on which I begin to underline or scribble comments becomes a gauge to my evaluation and respect.

I started underlining in How to Cuss in Western on page 2, where Michael P. Branch exp...