Who Is a Writer?

Who can be a writer? With Blogger and Xanga, anybody can be a writer, self-publishing their thoughts. I am surfing the web for information on the new NH poet laureate, Cynthia Huntington. I am meeting with her next week to talk about her writing and would like to have something intelligent to say. Her recent book of a poetry is hard to find around here, even though she is the director of the creative writing program at Dartmouth. Fortunately, there is a copy at Norwich Bookstore on hold for me, which I will pick up after this short blog.

Anyway, surfing and surfing, I read her biography on the Ploughshares web site. For fun, I looked up an old Michigan classmate of mine, Jess Row. He now teaches at Montclair State University in NJ. He recently received the Whiting Award for promising new writers. Then I googled another UM alum, Karen Hwa, who is now an editor at Cornell UP. I always enjoyed her work. She has a few published pieces available on online chapbooks.

I am a writer. At least, I used to think so. In my portfolio I have maybe three good stories unpublished, not yet rewritten, but probably should be: "Alarms," "The Right Arm," and "Service," These are getting old. I have seeds of newer projects tucked away in different half-filled notebooks around the house. I make assignments for myself: write a story where you keep populating each scene with more and more people; write a story in an hour; just write.

I have an essay on driving that I would like to translate into a scene in a story, and another idea about a visit to Rembrandt exhibit. Reading helps me to write, because I react to what I read. I see your sentence and raise you another - I can write a character that would answer differently. I've been enjoying Carol Shields. Her prose is intelligent without being preachy, accessible on a word-by-word level, but still challenging when you see what the words have woven together. I felt the same way about Harriet Doerr's Stones for Ibarra, although admittedly it got a little precious towards the end.

SWEET NEW FIND
Fellow blogger Zach Braff. His musings on his new movie's web site (see link under Movie Watch) are a treat!