Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog, page 27
October 12, 2020
The necessity of a Creative Play Day!
For years now, I’ve committed myself so completely to writing and marketing my work on social media and beyond that I rarely give myself a day off. All that has changed since my husband urged me to have at least one day a week when I do something different. I didn’t need too much convincing. Since […]
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October 5, 2020
To read or not to read: Is that the question?
In one of her New York Times Book Review columns, Anna Holmes has stated that readers should skip parts of a narrative, “particularly if an author is writing without clarity of purpose or showing off.” In general, I agree with this approach, especially if a writer is wasting my time as a reader by not […]
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September 28, 2020
Confessions of a Facebook convert
Before I became a Facebook user, I thought it was for my students, not for serious adults like myself. It was a way for them to interact with other young people and promote their youth culture. I didn’t see any benefit for mature adults with busy lives. It seemed a silly distraction and waste of […]
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September 21, 2020
It takes a village to edit a short story!
On September 7, I posted on my blog “Don’t Avoid Editing Many Layers.” I want to expand on that post today as I’m constantly revising my own understanding of critique partners and how they help us writers grow. Revising is the most important part of the writing process, apart from generating material to revise, and […]
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September 14, 2020
Why are book reviews important?
You’ve just finished that last book you picked up from the library, and wow, it was a good one. The story was riveting, the language poetic and the characters so well-developed you feel as though you want to go meet them for tea. What’s the first thing you do? Why, you go back to the […]
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September 7, 2020
Dear fellow writers: Don’t avoid editing’s many layers!
Small presses don’t have the reputation that larger presses do of having high editorial standards. But my experience with these presses, especially Regal House Publishing, the one that published my second novel, Curva Peligrosa, was revelatory. Before submitting the manuscript to the press for its consideration. I’d been through it numerous times on my own, […]
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August 31, 2020
Is Rabih Alameddine’s AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN an unnecessary book?
When I began reading Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman for my reading group, I was sorry we had selected this book. I had read his previous novel, The Hakawati, expecting to love it because it resembled The Arabian Nights in some ways, a work I had absorbed as a young girl. But I ended up […]
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August 24, 2020
What does it mean to be human?
As a humanities major, I had read many of the ancient Greek writers’ major works: Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sappho, Solon, Plato, Aristotle, Hesiod, Pindar, and several others. But Richard Jenkyns has not only reintroduced these major figures to me, but he has also revealed how complex their work was. It’s still […]
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August 17, 2020
Are writing & sex connected?
Is there a connection between writing and sex? Between selling one’s skills as a writer and being a prostitute? I opened the door to my husband’s psychoanalytic office, a neutral ground where I could meet with my own clients, writers (or potential writers) that needed help. I was about to enter into the complexities of […]
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August 10, 2020
For lovers of Matisse & poetry
I fell in love with Matisse many years ago because of his innovative colors and compositions. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to see most of his work that’s collected in museums around the world, including the amazing Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Awhile back, when my husband and I visited the Cone Collection at […]
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