Week in Seven Words #559

This covers the week of 10/4/20 - 10/10/20.

discombobulated

A couple of lively restaurants, and around them blight. Farther south, an eerie funhouse feeling to the streets, as Disney characters shamble around and breakdancers try to work up enthusiasm in disjointed knots of people. A cowboy in underwear poses with his fans.

disruption

Borne out of sleep on a wave of anxiety. 

gauging

The teacher's voice is strained, because she can't see us. She can't know for sure if we're looking confused or distracted. She does ask questions and hopes that she won't be met by the ominous silence of ignorance.

gossamer

Two violinists with scruffy gray beards play Vivaldi at one of the entrances to the park. The music is like spun gold. It threads through traffic and past shouts and laughter.

normality

It's a pleasure to sit at a tiny table that looks like its legs are made of toothpicks and just enjoy a drink, a conversation.

normothermia

I ask him why the building's heat isn't on yet, and he tells me with a wry smile that some people are still using their A/C to keep cool. Are we all of the same species, I wonder.

sun-warmed

At lunch, the sukkah is warm. It has basked in the sun, like the heavy garden next to it.

Week in Seven Words #526

This covers the week of 2/16/20 - 2/22/20.

admirable

She's productive, patient, organized, and kindly, intelligent without being arrogant, a good teacher overall.

assenting

They keep cutting into each other's speech, and their voices are getting louder, so it seems at first like they're working themselves into a fight. But they're in agreement. They're vigorously, almost rabidly, agreeing with each other about a set of political beliefs. Around them, the other coffee shop customers keep their eyes fixed on phones and laptops.

burrowing

In a neighborhood that's otherwise cold and dingy, the library is a warm nook.

ciao

We part ways sweetly on a dark street.

conversing

We curl up side by side for a long conversation.

lackluster

A cheesy cartoon, crude jokes, and stilted conversation.

quarrel

Sobs, slammed doors, the seeming hopelessness of a fight with a good friend. Chances are that half an hour from now, they'll be on speaking terms again.

Book Rec: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Betrayal is one of the themes in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. Set in Edinburgh during the 1930s, the novel centers on a bold, unusual schoolteacher (Miss Brodie) and a small group of girls she takes under her wing. From about the time they're 10 to when they leave school at 17, they're called the "Brodie set," as if they're part of an exclusive club.

Miss Brodie's mission is ostensibly to give the girls a much broader education than they'd receive through the school's ordinary curriculum. But over time it seems that she's trying to mold them to her own liking or fix them in place with her own labels or judgments. I think that's one of the betrayals in the book – when students begin to seem less like students and more like acolytes, or like attendants in the court of a queen. To what extent can Miss Brodie fix their path in life, given her influence over them?

And how empty is her own life, that she needs such a degree of influence over her students? In what ways has she betrayed herself?

At different points in the book, the narrative flashes forward to show the girls as adults. It's revealed that one of them betrays Miss Brodie to the headmistress of the school by revealing the teacher's fascist sympathies. Miss Brodie's admiration of fascism seems like it's based on puffed-up fantasies (also, it's interesting how the nonconformity of Miss Brodie, who refuses to be like other teachers, co-exists with her fondness for the Blackshirts and with her own desire to mold her students and their paths in life).

When the student informs on her, to what extent is it an act of betrayal? You're left to wonder at all of the motives at play. If Miss Brodie violated the trust and responsibility of her position as teacher, informing on her may be seen as a necessary act, even if her misdeeds have less to do with her misguided admiration of Mussolini and more to do with how she attempts to influence the girls. The student in question may also have been trying to gain some control over Miss Brodie; she may have been struggling with the profound influence Miss Brodie has had on her life. It may be that the student Miss Brodie influences most – the one who becomes most psychologically enmeshed with the errant teacher – is also the one who turns on her.

Week in Seven Words #471

arrival
I need to curb my impatience and allow him to arrive at an answer. He needs to think quietly, then have the time to explain and evaluate his conclusions. I don't want to immediately jump in and tell him what's wrong. He needs to work through it.

disengaged
For most of that one day, I look at the rest of the world as if from another dimension.

pigeons
As she walks, she tosses crumbs from a plastic bag. Pigeons fly in from all around. Their wings make splatting sounds, and they land in a bristling crowd on the sidewalk.

selfies
There's a cleft in the rock, and it overlooks water, trees, and shimmering buildings. People take turns standing in it for selfies. It's practically a photo booth.

squirming
They negotiate eating a pizza outdoors, in an atmosphere of tension and discontent. The seats are uncomfortable. The napkins fly off.

stark
She's unliked, unloved. Maybe deep down she realizes how much, and it hurts to see.

stentorian
A woman uses a bullhorn to remind the kids on the playground, "Keep your coats on."

Week in Seven Words #356

carping
Today, I'm an eyebrow that isn't properly tweezed. Tomorrow, I'll be a forehead pimple. By which blemish will I be assessed the day after?

drift
They express their political stance by posting a meme or buying a product featured in a feel-good commercial from a large corporation.

flatulence
He has made the mistake of giving broccoli to the dog.

pedagogy
They're stuck with an indifferent teacher who asks nothing and accepts almost anything. In response, they ask their teacher almost nothing and ignore almost everything.

poise
When only the orchestra is playing, the violinist stands calmly, surrounded by the storm of music.

punctual
I tell her that I need to talk to her mom for a couple of minutes, then I'll be ready to play. At the two-minute mark, she pops up from behind a cabinet, startling me and reminding me of my promise.

tickle
The wind feels like dozens of gentle pats to the face.

Week in Seven Words #320

crisply
It's a crackling park. Branches bristle, evergreen needles scritch, mulch grinds underfoot.

enchanter
The branches wave about the tree's crown as if it's casting a spell.

frantic
In everything, she chases love, sincere unflinching love, withheld from her as a child and longed-for decades later.

loosening
Shoulders relaxing as I settle at the table with a glass of sparkling wine.

masquerade
Forehead-slapping moment when the words I've rehearsed come out costumed in a different meaning and tone.

nonfulfillment
"They don't know how to write," he says of his students. "They don't care. They think they have nothing worth sharing. Maybe they don't!"

worrying
Sucking on cough drops as the wind nips my cheeks and throat.

Five Short Stories Featuring Mothers and Sons

Title: Donal Webster
Author: Colm Tóibín
Where I Read It: The Book of Other People
This is a meditative and melancholy story, where the narrator shares his thoughts with someone off-screen. He reflects on the time his mother was dying. They had been distant from each other, and he wonders if he'd made the right choice to move so far from home, to a different continent. Then again, the distance between them was never only physical.

Of the three children (two boys and a girl), he's the less preferred son. It always seemed to him that way. It's possible his mother loved him, but he isn't certain of her love or its strength. Maybe, had he remained close to her side throughout his adult life, they would have enjoyed a more loving relationship, but there's no guarantee it would have made any difference. He's considering what a second chance between them might have meant, knowing it might not have changed anything important. Maybe circumstances were set against him from the start, and he was never meant to receive his mother's closeness or love.

There's much that's left unresolved in this story. The narrator shares it not because he's cleared up a mystery or made a last-minute connection to his distant mother, but because the story seemed to have been echoing in him until he needed to let it out.

13 short stories for Friday the 13th

I don't believe in the Friday the 13th superstition or that 13 is an unlucky number, but I thought I'd have some fun with today's date (especially because this weekend it's the Ides of March too!).

So here are a bunch of stories that are dark, disturbing, or otherwise strange, exploring fears and tragedies. The characters might be unlucky. They might also work to make themselves unlucky.

Good Short Fiction: Several Tales from 50 Great American Short Stories

Collection: 50 Great American Short Stories
Editor: Milton Crane

Title: Cluney McFarrar's Hardtack
Author: John McNulty
During the Second World War, a veteran of the First World War talks about some of his experiences fighting overseas. He focuses on one night, after a battle, when he doubles back to snatch up some hardtack dropped by a fallen soldier. Everything in the story gathers towards the moment when he's about to enter the dark and silent wood full of the bodies of dead soldiers.

-------------

Title: A Dead Issue
Author: Charles M. Flandrau
This one is written elegantly and incisively, about a man in his early thirties who turns out looking foolish when he returns to teach at his alma mater, Harvard. Even though he's at least a decade older than most of them, he fraternizes with the undergraduates at the club he used to belong to when he was a student; at the same time, he feels isolated from people closer to his own age.

The story brilliantly shows his need to be liked and to belong somewhere, and how he has trouble leaving the security of that old club and its easy associations. Maybe he recalls with nostalgia the friendship of his own classmates, bonds of fellowship that he thought would stay with him and support him throughout his life; he thinks he can recreate those bonds with a younger generation. Because he hasn't moved on, he risks compromising his principles as a teacher to be chummy with the students. They're young and self-centered and carefree, and they show him an easygoing friendliness that doesn't mean much. How will the main character find his place in life as he grows older, with his face still turned towards the past?

Week in Seven Words #151 & #152

Week in Seven Words #151

affective
When the book I've worked on makes its way into the world I feel a nervous happiness.

kick
Short clips of improv comedy are like shots of an energy drink.

perpetual
The blink of the cursor measures time.

ploy
She tries to give me 'supercalifragalisticexpialidocious' as a mathematical solution. I am unmoved.

progress
Step 1: Recognizing a problem. Step 3: Doing something about it. Step 2: Inertia.

scattered
At the front of the line there's usually someone whose library card is lost among a hundred compartments in a purse or whose money is floating around in a bottomless coat pocket.

sheeted
The water is beaten down by the wind.

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Week in Seven Words #152

evacuation
He isn't toilet-trained but he's started to seek out privacy when nature calls. He tries to find a quiet spot in the house where he can stand or sit in his diaper, and if you approach him, he warns you off with a plaintive "No, no..." until he's done.

fluidity
I see the sculpture in the wan cloudy light of a winter afternoon, so I don't realize at first that it has color sliding through it - a pale lavender flowing like liquid through its metal veins.

impressionistic
The view from the window is one gray smear, like a Monet painting of London.

palimpsest
I like historical tours of downtown where you learn that criminals were hanged and traitors shot in the peaceful square where people now eat their lunches by the fountain and text each other.

pragmatically
His expectation of instantaneous results have given way to pragmatism; there's so much more work to do, so much farther to go.

prioritizing
I had a feeling she'd stop being angry with me, because she'd want to know how my date went.

shortcut
He's been asked to sort his toys neatly into drawers. But there are so many of them, and he'd rather be playing than organizing his room. So he labels one drawer the 'everything drawer' and piles as much stuff as possible into it. Unfortunately it doesn't pass inspection.

Interview with Kathryn Ionata

I'm happy to bring to you this interview with Kathryn Ionata, a writer I was introduced to online by another interviewee (Elizabeth Spencer). Since then I've read and enjoyed the work she's sent me, along with this wonderful interview.

Bio
Kathryn Ionata is a fiction writer and poet whose work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Philadelphia Stories, Wisconsin Review, Hawai’i Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Aries, Schuylkill Valley Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing Fiction from Temple University in Philadelphia, and has taught writing at Temple University, The College of New Jersey, and Penn State University-Abington. Her website can be found here.

HK: Why do you write?
KI: I write because I don’t know what I would think about if not stories. My parents tell me that I’ve been creating stories my entire life, before I could write them down. Storytelling feels like an integral part of my makeup. Not necessarily good or bad, but just there. It’s very difficult to explain because I don’t know what other people have in their heads in place of stories. Probably real life, but sometimes I prefer to think about the way things could be rather than the way they are. I don’t write every day, but I think about writing every day, many times a day.

HK: Share with us some of the most important writing lessons or advice that you've given your students.
KI: Something I try very hard to emphasize with students is the importance of setting. I’m indebted to Joan Mellen, my graduate mentor, for instilling in me the value of time, place, politics, history, and culture in fiction. After I had taught creative writing for a couple years, I noticed that most students, of all levels of experience and skill, tended to shy away from any kind of setting. I saw a lot of stories of indeterminate time and place. I think that comes from an effort to make the writing accessible to everyone, but the result is the story doesn’t feel fully developed. So I started making a concerted effort to address this.

I tell my students that setting is not just time and place, but that time and place are what create setting. This past semester my students read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and did an activity where they had to change the setting, and explain how the story would change accordingly, which it always did, sometimes in hilarious ways. I’ve also played Bruce Springsteen songs such as “Born to Run” and had students analyze the setting created in the lyrics.

HK: In what ways has getting an MFA in Creative Writing benefited you? What do you think people should know before choosing to pursue this degree?
KI: In short, being in an MFA program made me a better writer. Not only do I know more about literature, but being forced to spend two years concentrating on my writing made me a better writer at the end than at the beginning. Beyond my own writing, the MFA program I was in awarded me a very generous scholarship where I taught one or two classes every semester, and I discovered how much I enjoyed teaching. Plus, I had a great support system of faculty and peers. I met some wonderful friends in my MFA program, and I’ve been lucky enough to read their extraordinary writing and get some amazing feedback.

I would advise anyone considering getting an MFA to think about what they want out of such a program, and plan accordingly. Maybe you want to work with nationally recognized writers, or maybe it’s more important to be in a program that emphasizes literature, or teaching. You may not get all of these things out of one program because each will have its own strengths and weaknesses. Do some research and see what appeals to you. I think one of the most important things you can find out about a program is what classes students are required to take each semester. You probably want to find a program that allows you the chance to take lots of writing classes so you have time to focus on your writing. I’ve had friends go into MFA programs where there was so much scholarly work required that they didn’t have much time to focus on their own writing.

HK: Tell us about something you wrote that you're really proud of (and why you're proud of it).
KI: I’m very proud of a poem I wrote called “A Supermarket in Pennsylvania” that was published in Philadelphia Stories. The poem features a speaker who sees her former psychiatrist in a grocery store. I thought it was a very serious poem, but when I read it at a reading, people laughed at the line “I saw my old psychiatrist at Trader Joe’s.” I’ve always admired people who can inject humor into their poetry and I felt proud that I had managed that. I also like that the poem is very succinct—I reined in my prosaic nature and the final result is that much better because it’s controlled.

I am quietly proud of my current novel in progress, but it’s too new for me to talk about.

HK: If you could choose any three authors, dead or alive, to meet with you to discuss literature and give you feedback on your writing, who would they be and why?
KI: I would definitely want Emily Brontë there. The passion she invokes in Wuthering Heights is unparalleled—not just romantic passion, but the story itself has an inherent passion in the instability of the characters. I would love to talk about the creating and rendering of families with Louisa May Alcott. Little Women is one of my favorite books, for sentimental reasons but also because of the dynamics of the March sisters. And I think I’d round out the group with Dorothy Parker in the hope that some of her biting wit would rub off on me.

HK: What are your current projects and some of your future plans as a writer?
KI: I recently finished the first draft of a short story about a group of Italian-American teenage boys living in North Philadelphia in the 1970s. I’ve been trying to do these characters and that setting justice for years, and I hope that I’m getting closer. I am also trying to work on the novel I mentioned before. I didn’t have much time to write during the fall semester, so I’m a little rusty, but I hope to have more time over winter break. The novel is about a mother and daughter, or maybe mothers and daughters, plural. Topics to be included are the 2012 presidential election, Joni Mitchell, marriage, “the one that got away,” aging parents, and nose piercings. And that’s all I want to say for now.

Thank you, Kathryn!

Week in Seven Words #141

fallback
When I go somewhere new and don't know anybody, instead of hanging around awkwardly with my drink and thinking about who I should approach and whether anyone will approach me, I try to find a bookcase; then I can half-browse for books, half-scope out the room without feeling like a spotlight is on me.

inhale
When shouting/singing/dancing/whirling people pour into the room and fill it wall-to-wall, I slip outside for a breather.

pinched
Why are so many educators humorless? When they make jokes they look pained and nervous, as if they've colored outside the lines and won't get a sticker for their work.

plastron
As he lectures us in a nasal voice, admitting no interruptions, he reminds me of a tortoise. A pedantic tortoise in an pea green coat. Thinking about him this way makes him more human to me.

pretenses
Passive-aggressive silence is more effective, and obnoxious, than an explicit renunciation.

steep
The Prayer for Rain permeates us.

thawing
At last the heat is on, and the floor no longer feels like permafrost.

Interview with Relyn Lawson

Among my friends online I'm lucky to count Relyn; we've been visiting each other's blogs for a while now, and on hers I've always found warmth, inspiration and beauty, and a love of life - seen in her photos, lists, her thoughts on what she's grateful for, poems she spotlights, and other delights; you can tell she sees the world with joy and wants to share that joy and wonder with everyone. Now she's here to share her creative insights and some of her wonderful photos (each photo in this post is hers).

Bio
Like every woman she knows, Relyn Lawson wears many hats. She is a wife, mother, teacher, dreamer, writer, photographer, chocoholic, laughaholic, all-around passionate woman. She excels at the art of silly, and knows that encouraging others is her sacred calling. Relyn believes that the secret of a happy life is to be consistently and purposefully grateful. To that end, she and her family list something for which they are grateful each and every night before going to bed. You can find that list here. For more of her photography, musings, ramblings, and other nonsense, you should visit her main blog, here.

Now for the interview...

HK: How did your passion for photography develop? Has the world come to seem different to you after looking at it through a camera lens?
RL: The Christmas I was nine, I received the camera I had been longing for. Since then, I have spent a good bit of time trying to capture the beauty and joy that I see around me. I guess that's what photography really is for me - trying to make my own soul visible. I remember longing to spend my life taking pictures long before I knew there was such a thing as a professional photographer. As I became a teenager, I knew that being a photographer was possible, but very impractical. There was no way I could spend the money it would take to become a proficient photographer. Think of the cost of film and developing and equipment...

I tucked that dream away and kept taking pictures. But my focus was different, my pictures were an effort to trap memories, not to create art. I didn't really believe I had the means to become good at photography. I had already written off that dream as impractical and likely impossible.

And then I started blogging.

And the longer I blogged the more photographers I was exposed to. I saw normal people; working mothers, students, and hobbyists; all creating beauty - sharing their souls. By then, technology had caught up with my heart's desire. I knew that with digital photography, I could afford to chase after my old dream. I started saving and in less than a year, I was able to buy my Big Girl Camera. Oh, happy day.

I'd always seen the world as though through a lens. Now, I had the equipment to begin to learn how to show the world what was already in my head and my heart.

HK: What do you believe are your strengths as a photographer? And what do you hope to improve on or work towards in the future?
RL: I think my greatest strength as a photographer is really my most defining personal characteristic. I am exuberantly, passionately, completely in love with people and this beautiful life we've been given. I love life. I love this gorgeous world. I love people and their interesting, beautiful faces. I love it all! And, I love to use my camera to show you the beauty I see and to share my joy with you.

As far as what I need to improve on with regard to photography? Well, that is also a defining personal characteristic. I need to work on self-discipline. I need to focus on learning and improving and growing. There's so much to learn! I am happily married and we have a ten year old daughter. I am a second grade teacher and very involved at church. It's astounding how much time all of those relationships require. I always have a camera with me, but I rarely give photography the attention and effort, the focus, it really deserves.

HK: What's your preferred camera, and which photo editing/formatting software (if any) do you use? Why?
RL: I own a Cannon T2i, and I love it. I have several lenses, but I find myself shooting with my 50mm prime most often. My completely wonderful husband gave me Photoshop Elements over a year ago, but I still can't use it. It's that time thing again. It takes a lot of time and focused attention to learn Photoshop. I have only so much time to spend and I'd rather take pictures. For now I edit using PicMonkey and I am pretty happy with it. However, I know that I am going to have to spend some serious time learning PSE before I can move my photography on to the next level.

HK: What qualities do you believe make for an excellent photo? What tends to draw your eye most, both when taking photos and appreciating other people's photos?
RL: I love a photo, any photo, that hints at a story. The photographs I love all hold stories in their depths. I want my photographs to draw you in, to make your head begin to buzz with the story behind the image. I don't just want to take a picture of a pretty house. I want the house to make you day dream.

I don't want to take a picture of a pretty girl. I want you to wonder who it is she's thinking about, who she's missing...

HK: You work as a teacher and are also a mother and aunt. What are some of the most important lessons you've learned - about people, art, or anything else - from the children in your life?
RL: As a teacher, I've learned to ask, "Why?" before making any kind of judgement or decision. Children often do things that seem strange or inappropriate to adults. I find that if you ask "Why?" and really listen to the answer, you'll learn so much. You'll learn about the child, about the world around you, and especially about yourself.

I love the way that children laugh at every opportunity. They know how to turn any moment into fun. They make friends easily and find the world to be filled with wonder. The best thing about spending my life with children is that I have company in my silliness and joy.

HK: What do you think are the best ways to foster creativity in children, along with a passionate engagement with the world?
RL: Oh, I love this question. I think fostering creativity and passionate engagement in children requires two things from adults. First, you must also be creative and engaged. Children don't learn what they don't see you live. Further, children don't learn what they don't live. So, buy the paints, bake the invented cake, get dirty, make the mess. I repeat: Make the mess!

Also, remember to listen to their ideas. It's not so much that we have to teach children to be creative. I think most of us simply have to work at not stifling the creativity they are already bubbling over with. Here's something to try: Next time a child in your life has an idea they are enthusiastic about, no matter how inconvenient, help them make it happen.

HK: Do you have any specific advice for aspiring photographers or, more generally, advice for other people pursuing an artistic passion? For instance, what would you say to people who fear they'll lose enthusiasm for what they do and feel uninspired, or who fear rejection for their work?
RL: I think we all struggle from time to time with feeling uninspired and unmotivated. When we do, blogs are a great source of both inspiration and motivation. Then there's time with friends, a short trip, museums, gorgeous movies, time spent being silly, listening to children laugh... I could go on and on about what inspires me. But, mostly, I find that I just need to pick up my camera. Nike was right all along, Just Do It!

Thank you, Relyn!

Interview with Elizabeth Spencer

The second interview on this blog is with Elizabeth Spencer, whom I know through a writer's group in Philly. I respect her thorough and thoughtful feedback and enjoy reading her short stories and chapters from her longer work. I'm so glad she's agreed to share her insights about writing (and teaching writing).

Bio
Elizabeth Spencer is an English teacher, fiction writer, and cat foster mom. She graduated from Temple University's MFA program in 2011 and lives in South Philadelphia with her husband and their quirky cats. In her spare time she loves to practice yoga and make photographs. You can meet her foster kittens here and read a short piece of her fiction at this site. One of her short stories, The Permanence of Objects, was recently published in the third issue of C4, and she has launched a new reading series in South Philly featuring prose and poetry writers.

HK: Why do you write?
ES: I've always thought of writing as a compulsion, as something one has to do, or why wouldn't you spend that time doing any number of easier and more enjoyable things? But with that said, the act of writing (when I'm in the middle of it and it's going well) brings me a lot of pleasure and it's also one of the rare times in a day that I'm completely focused on one thing, in an almost meditative state. Most of the "pain" I experience about writing is from letting too many days slip by without working or worrying about what the "result" (i.e. publication) of all this writing will be.

HK: What do you think your strengths are as a writer, and what do you hope to improve on?
ES: I'm observant; people always love the details in my work. The main thing I've been trying to improve on the last few years is plot. My stories and my first attempt at a novel tended to meander without a strong sense of conflict or character motivation.

HK: Share with us some of the most important writing lessons or advice you impart to your students.
ES: Last semester I really stressed dialogue, as in how to make it advance the plot and how to break it up with physical details. I tend to focus on whatever I'm trying to improve in my own work at the time. I also tell them that stories don't need to end with some catastrophe like suicide or 9/11 or a cancer diagnosis. What's helped me the most is the mantra, "work, don't worry." I don't remember who said that. Just put your butt in the chair and stay there for one hour, two hours, three, no matter how you feel or what else is going on in your life. Which makes me remember a favorite piece of advice from one of my professors, Samuel R. Delany, who told us that as writers we'd have to be thieves; we'd have to steal time in order to write regularly.

HK: There are people who say that good writing isn't something that can be taught in a classroom or workshop environment. To what extent do you agree/disagree? What do you think makes for a good writing teacher or mentor?
ES: I think there is some measure of innate talent and/or interest in a person for a certain subject, but no matter how talented you are you still have to practice your ass off to become great at anything. Thus, a writing class can teach you the tools you'll need to produce a great story and can sharpen your sensibilities to recognize what's working and what's not. This is what I feel I got out of graduate school and I think I'm a much stronger writer for it. I recommend yoga for teaching yourself discipline, which is something else you need to become great at anything. As for inspiration, just look around and listen.

What kind of student you are determines what kind of teacher/mentor you need, I think. For me, it's someone encouraging and patient, who is honest with criticism and generous with suggestions, and says over and over, "you can do this."

HK: If you could assemble a panel of any three authors (dead or alive) to give you feedback on your work and discuss writing with you, who would they be and why?
ES: I would have to include my husband Clint Smith, a poet and fiction writer, because he reads everything first and is always brutally honest yet extremely encouraging. He probably knows my work even better than I do. Then I would invite my aforementioned professor Chip because I learned such a lot from him in a short period of time and I want to learn more. Finally, I would love to discuss writing with Joan Didion, but I'd be pretty terrified to receive her feedback. There are many other writers I admire, though. However, I don't think that the best writers always make the best teachers/feedback givers.

HK: What are some of your current writing projects?
ES: A novel that I started in January, two stories that I recently wrote first drafts of in a rare fury of inspiration and productivity, and a third story I just started last week. This isn't typical--I usually only have one or at most two projects going on at any one time.

Thank you, Elizabeth!

Site with free programming lessons

I found what looks like an awesome site, Code Year, that will teach you computer programming by sending you a free lesson every Monday. The first few lessons of the year are up on the website for anyone (like me) who didn't discover this at the start of the year. I'm excited about this, because I was planning to develop my computer skills this year beyond what I know of Microsoft Office, a handful of statistics programs, and basic html.

Week in Seven Words #56

bidirectional
There is a link between the ability to remember the past and the ability to imagine the future. People who struggle to recall their past with any clarity or detail also tend to have difficulty envisioning fleshed out future scenarios.

coating
Fresh snow in a garbage can conceals all waste.

perfunctory
His eyes dart to the clock or stare past my shoulder at the wall; you're done existing for me now, they seem to say.

reassertion
Raw knuckles and the dust of snow on rooftops. It's cold again.

silliness
At dinner after a long day the conversation is full of welcome nonsense.

spotless
Seven years ago, at age 53, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He's physically fit, still jogs on familiar paths around his home, his cheeks flushed and his complexion healthy. You need to keep moving, he says, or else you die. There are many things he can't do anymore without guidance and supervision, like making a cup of tea or even setting the table for dinner, but his wife keeps pushing him to do as much as he can for himself - she says she's not going to let him go so quickly. He pauses at the dining room wall, thinks a photo of his son is himself at that age. His wife corrects him. Outside, resting after his run, he says you have to keep going and not think about the future. He can't think about the past either. Lost and optimistic, he jogs on clean beautiful paths in the countryside.

synaptic
I prepare several topics to cover and questions to ask, but there's only so much you can plan when teaching. When it goes well, when you and the students are alive to each other and interested in the discussion, fresh connections form between facts that seemed unrelated, new ideas emerge to be refined or torn down, and everyone sings a little with a spark of inspiration.

Week in Seven Words #37

linger
Things that get put off and delayed do not go away. Why do I keep letting myself think they do? Though I turn my mind to other chores and tasks, the things I've tried to put off still sit there (I can see them out of the corner of my eye) siphoning away my concentration until at last I just have to deal with them.

neglected
I don't want a human life to go by unobserved. The people who seem invisible, unloved, and unwanted by others - I used to think they're ignored in large part out of a lack of time and willingness, also an indifference and callousness (life's busy, so much to do, can't stop to look, and are they worth it anyway?) but there's more to it than that. There's an underlying fear too, that anyone can slip through the cracks.

penne
Maybe it's the colder weather, because I get a craving for pasta this week; I like the way it bubbles in the pot, the billow of steam as I tip it into the colander, and the plentiful plate of it drenched in tomato sauce, garlic, basil and mozzarella.

phoenix
A new week, and new ideas rise out of the unceremonious ashes of old ones.

puddled
The world is overrun with cold water. Every step is a squelch, a splish, a spatter.

straining
I want them to understand. I point, repeat, stare at them with a desperate encouragement, ask questions, try to urge them out of a state of passive absorption. I wait for the light to flow into their faces, the glimmer of comprehension, that tells me they've learned - and that even if they don't grasp everything, that they want to at least struggle with the material, to lean forward in their chairs and puzzle things out, ask questions, throw suggestions out there without a fear of being wrong.

vaccine
The nurse administering the flu shot asks me if I'd like her to tell me when the needle is about to go in. I tell her it's not necessary, because I'm going to watch. Ever since I was a kid, I've never taken the suggestion to look away during a shot. Much as the sight is unappealing, if I don't look I'll tense up; maybe when I look, it feels less like something is happening to me that I have to just passively take.