May 12, 2022                              Carol Brennan King

Three more weeks and we are back at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, PA…in the Ryon Room. I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to seeing you there.

Meanwhile, are you reading or writing? In my last post, I talked about reading closely. As writers, it is helpful to look at what we are reading to see how the writer took you on that emotional roller coaster.

What emotions do you remember having stirred as you read your favorite books? How did that happen, that those words on a page had the power to make you mad or cry or do a happy dance? You can learn how to do that by reading closely. Look at how the writer uses punctuation to play with your emotions. Look at what they do with word length, how something as simple as the length of words can speed up the action or slow it down.

Enough, that was last week.

Many of you know that two months ago I fell on the treadmill and broke my kneecap. Really smart maneuver! Consequently, my writing corner, set up in the family room, was transferred to a corner of the dining room.

My husband qualifies for sainthood because he created this workspace for me.

I am a great fan of two monitors or a laptop and a second monitor. This allows me to have my resources open on one screen and the document I am working on on the other one.

I just took these photos on my phone, emailed them to myself, then downloaded them and copied them here.

Maybe you have done that before, but it will save you a lot of money. If you blog or even want to send photos or illustrations with a Facebook post or blog or even your own webpage, you have to be careful about using other people’s work. I love it when I can make my own. Sorry for all that, if it is old news for you.

Anyway, I did this because I wanted to talk about the books I chose for this space.

I have talked about Kelly Notares before. One thing I like about this book is that it sounds like she is talking to you, like she really loves writing and she wants you to get it too…the loving and knowing how to write.

Years ago I took a class from Brian Doyle, a New Yorker who was then living and writing and raising his family in Oregon. I got to the room early and already it was jammed, people sitting everywhere, even on that very hot summer day, not the kind of day you want to be that close to your neighbor. But they knew he was worth it, and pretty soon, so did I. Boyle died a few years ago from cancer, but his book is an easy, wonderful read. A great writer to learn from. Honestly, I’d read anything he wrote.

OK, that’s enough for this week. After all, it is Thursday and I have PT early tomorrow morning. Let me know if any of this is useful to you.