History, Real Life, and Faith
In May 2008, my businessman brother had an extra seat on a trip to China. He invited me to join him and on an incredibly clear day, we visited the Great Wall of China. We’d flown up that morning from Shanghai, and he had an expatriate friend celebrating his children’s birthday at a rustic restaurant far out in the countryside….
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100 years ago on June 28 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was murdered in Sarajevo, launching into motion events that led to The Great War. Everything about our modern world can, perhaps, be tied back to the assassination of both Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his beloved morganic wife Sophia. Did it have to happen? Does it matter? It happened, the Great…
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Pruning words from my most recent text consumes a lot of time. It’s made me consider how often I, among others, use too many words–whether in writing or speaking. My husband occasionally complains about my compulsion to explain everything. “It’s not enough you tell the children to do something, you then go on and on and on about why they…
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Genocide is such an odd subject for a discussion between friends. One summer, I stopped in to visit my friend Jane for a lovely afternoon in her charming screened-in Connecticut porch. We spent the whole afternoon talking about genocide. That had not been the plan when I arranged to visit, but when I walked into the porch, I stopped beside…
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I’m in the middle of rewriting a novel and have come to the hardest part–I’m recasting the middle. Traditionally, novels have to work extra hard in their center sections. The beginning sets the storyline, gets the hero into trouble and starts the hero on the road to fulfillment, or at least an ending. The ending of the novel, of course, brings…
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Killing my darlings is the order of the day. The term, “killing my darlings,” has been attributed to a number of writers from William Faulkner to Allen Ginsburg, but it boils down to writers need to be ruthless in their personal editing. They need to really think about lines they love and consider getting rid of them for the sake…
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