WRITING AFTER SUNSETS
For years, I maintained a separate blog called writing after sunsets as a place for my thoughts on writing, reflections on teaching, and an outlet for writing that matters to me in ways that make me want to control how it is published. It has also been, from time to time, a platform for the work of others I know who have something to say.
Now, with this site as my central base of online operations, I’m folding that blog into the rest of my efforts. All previous content is here for easier access, but the heart of writing after sunsets remains in both my earlier posts and those to come.
The downside of down time
The lowest lows are manual labor of the soul and no one is equipped for that work alone.
Rejections, an acceptance, and reminders
The best kind of discomfort, that. The whole experience was a great reminder that stories aren’t for everyone, but they’re always for someone. Even writing teachers need that lesson retaught from time to time.
Books — The Irreversible Sun
It felt a bit providential, if I’m being honest. Lim’s work in this collection is a meditation on the external environments of Southern California all of us experience if we would but slow down and pay attention to it. If we would care for it more intentionally.
Books — Paintings that Look Like Things
Reading through the pieces in this book, I was constantly moved by small moments that call the reader’s attention back to the present tense in the face loss, of love, of life, and of the things we long for. These moments are realized, usually, too late for the person at the center of the poems.
“Disruption” of the best kind
What if the future of learning is in turning over the majority of control to the students and then consistently disrupting their work—creatively and for their own good, of course—over the length of the term until they make something together for a public audience?
“I’d say just…write the damn story.”
It was more than vaguely comforting to see what’s possible, even if it’s not a probable outcome for me. In an odd way, his having numerous projects in the works made me feel like I might—someday—get one of mine out the door.
Imaginative Teaching, considerable planning
Maybe free time, like meaning, is more a by-product of our choices along the way and less an item we can place on the calendar and access when we arrive at the prescribed time.
Another former student, another first book
That project was a collection of four short stories that showed astonishing breadth without losing connection with each other. The pieces, all set against the backdrop of coming of age in Maui in the early 21st century, ranged from the grittiest of realities to unflinching questions of the what lies just beyond our human understanding of reality on the spiritual plane.
Books — Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers
In short, he did what good teachers do: he made the normal strange and the strange a way back to what his students thought they knew. And, in that class, was the seed that became his book Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers. Having seen this idea develop almost since its inception, it was really fun to tear into it while away on sabbatical.