Michelle's Daily Dose for Writersdaily writing exercises to free the imagination(Untitled)- August 24, 2004 keep your eyes on the flag and your head in the sand So John Kerry went to war. He served honorably. He came home disgusted with the horrific and unnecessary loss of life on both sides of the battle. He voiced his anger. He had reason to be angry. After all, 58,219 American soldiers lost their lives in that war. Another 153,356 were wounded. It cost America 111 billion dollars--only a fraction of what we will spend in Iraq, but a staggering sum nonetheless. Surely, history has proven his anger..http://blogs.salon.com/0003164/2004/08/24.html#a18 (Untitled)- August 20, 2004 friday reading tip: Check out the new anthology, Alumni Grill, featuring stories by a number of Southern writers, including yours truly. Other authors in the mix are Brad Watson (author of the excellent story collection Last Days of the Dog Men and the novel Heaven of Mercury), Silas House, Rick Bragg, Suzanne Hudson, and Tom Franklin, to name a few. Alumni Grill and Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe III are the latest in a series of Southern fiction anthologies published by...http://blogs.salon.com/0003164/2004/08/20.html#a17 (Untitled)- August 18, 2004 the tennis players I&146;ve just finished reading The Tennis Players by Lars Gustafsson. It&146;s a very short novel, just 92 pages, so it only took me one morning to read, but I imagine I&146;ll be thinking about this book for a while. I&146;ve yet to meet a Lars Gustafsson novel I didn&146;t like. His work is characterized by quiet, contemplative narrators who bring to their observations a depth of thought and breadth of knowledge that is often missing in contemporary fiction. If you...http://blogs.salon.com/0003164/2004/08/18.html#a16 (Untitled)- August 17, 2004 danger This just in from my sister Misty, who's been backpacking around South America for the last three months. She just emerged from a two-week stint deep in the Amazon, among the Cofan. "Soon after we got there we heard that an 11 year old girl had been bitten by a snake and almost died. And a couple of dogs had been bitten by snake too. The longer we stayed, the more dangerous it seemed. One night a moth flew into the house and everyone came around to see it. After getting a closer...http://blogs.salon.com/0003164/2004/08/17.html#a15 |