Linda K. Sienkiewicz's Blog, page 28

What, Why, How: Ethel Morgan Smith

What:

My mother used to bring home old newspapers and Newsweek magazines after the white family she worked for threw them in the trash. I learned about the Civil Rights Movement from those old magazines. The newspaper-The Clayton Record (as in Clayton, Alabama home of the notorious Governor George C. Wallace) wasn’t interesting, mostly farm information, marriages, births and obits. No black folks were ever mentioned. I would entertain my sisters by standing on our kitchen table and not just...

What, Why, How: McKenna Dean

What:

I confess, I prefer my romances to have a bit of a twist to them—give me lovers who are also trying to clear their names of murder, or fighting space pirates, or turn into tigers in the blink of an eye. I’m drawn to paranormal romance because of the immense scope for storytelling. I write romance because I believe in happy endings. I know I’ll probably never be a household name, but I like to think that I can provide a bit of escapism for an hour or two. If I can give a caretaker a coup...

What, Why, How: Charles Salzberg

What:

I write. I started my first novel when I was 12. It was a roman a clef (although I certainly did not know what that term meant at the time) about a sleepaway summer camp. I had recently learned how to touch type, a class I had to take in school in order to be allowed to skip a grade (to this day I maintain it was the best class I ever took), and I made it to three single-space pages before I ran out of things to say. Not long ago, I moved and I actually found that artifact. It’s in a dr...

What. Why, How: Binnie Klein

What:

Like many writers, I started as a child with poetry, mostly moody tomes about the shape of loneliness. In my late adolescence and twenties, I got involved with the New York poetry “scene” – took workshops with well-known poets, started a magazine with some like-minded students, and moved into NYC from New Jersey. I have the classic bulging scrapbook of rejections, but “still, she persisted” (!) and started to publish in small journals and magazines. I won some awards, and did a stint at...

What, Why, How: Caroline Leavitt

What:

I create worlds! I write novels. I write scripts and short stories and essays. Everything to me is a story! I’ve always made up stories. A few years ago, one of my novels Into Thin Air was optioned and I was so tired of books being optioned and nothing happening, that I told my agent that I wanted to write the script. “Have you ever written scripts before?” she asked and I lied. “Of course I have.”

That night the producer called me and we chatted and then he asked me to send him a scrip...

What, Why, How: Kaye Curren

What:

I am a nonfiction advocate in a 200-year old entrenched tradition of poetry and fiction. Memoir, essays, humor essays, articles, book and movie reviews. I was told once I should write a novel. I can’t. I’m too hooked on true-life stories. I’m inspired by people’s lives – living, breathing, surviving, and coming out standing on their feet. I even have a special bookshelf for my favorite memoirs that inspire me.

Why:

Singing was my first love. In college and beyond, I had coaching by...

How to Evaluate Your Poem

“Do I shake the stuffing out of this poem, or just let it go…” Is it any good?

Acclaimed poet and teacher Jack Ridl says others often ask him, “Is my poem any good?”  He answers “It’s likely we all worry about that, or at least worry about embarrassing ourselves with what we’ve written. I like to ask my poems if they are effective. Then I ask ‘effective in what way/s?'”

Useful questions to ask your poem:

Jack offers some other (“more useful?”) questions to ask of your poem. Not all questions,...

What, Why, How: Janice Eidus

Photo credit: Alma Kastan What:

 In second grade, I proudly wrote my very first poem; it celebrated New York City where I lived: “I love the city/ It is so pretty.”

My desire back then was to grow up to become a writer of all genres: poet, playwright, short story writer, and novelist. As a young teen, I wrote plays and fiction about happy families – the opposite of my own — as well as short “novels” about imaginary cities and the imaginary people who lived in them.

Entering my 20s, my first p...

Three Sheets to the Wind: A Pirate Jamboree

Two of the three actors who played Blackbeard in an uproarious skit titled “Will the Real Blackbeard Please Stand Up” Avast, ye hearties!

Hurricane Florence forced us to reschedule our September visit to Ocracoke Island, NC to October, but lucky us, that’s when the annual Pirate Jamboree was held. We got to partake in two days of swashbuckling good fun!

Ocracoke Island is a narrow strip of sand largely controlled by the National Park Service. The only way on or off the island is by boat, ferr...

What, Why, How: Jack Ridl

What: I have been trying to write poems that evoke poetry for 51 years. I have also written essays, lots of blurbs, and every Thursday since the 2016 election a commentary with an appropriate poem. [In Time: Poems against the present administration] For 38 years I was a college teacher, all at the same college. Since retiring I have continued teaching One on One sessions and a monthly workshop in our home. I am also a full-fledged introvert, having nothing under E on the Myers-Briggs test. An...