I’m reading a very cool book, In Search of the Canary Tree, by Lauren E. Oakes. It’s early yet, and in it she’s just starting her Ph.D. research project analyzing yellow-cedar forests on an island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeast Alaska, near Sitka. What does this have to do with writing? I’m enthralled by […]
It seems incomprehensible to me that one senator can block legislation designed to literally save our way of life, but this is where we are. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) doesn’t like President Joe Biden’s climate bill, likely because the senator, made a millionaire by the coal industry, which he still makes money from (not to […]
Emmy nominations are out. Not exactly The Most Important Thing In The World right now (I just finished Tom Nichols’ piece in The Atlantic about how screwed we are on nuclear strategy), but I still have opinions. Not many since I haven’t seen 90, maybe 99 percent of the shows and people nominated. For Supporting […]
The long-awaited first images from the James Webb* Space Telescope were revealed the other day. Would it be heresy for this writer of science fiction to be meh about them? After all, I just released a novel about, well, space exploration. But like much of what I like to read, it’s about more than that. […]
I’m pretty bad at coming up with titles for my stories, but I love discovering the meaning of titles in other works so should use that as a lesson. One of my favorite books is A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. The title is a little off-putting. Long, weird. It’s about the aftermath […]
My wife once asked me what I like about writing. Depending on the day, like today as I struggle with a scene, I’d say not much. To describe writing as frustrating completely understates the feelings you have when you a) can’t think of what to write about, b) can’t remember that great idea you had […]
I haven’t posted one of these in a while. Twice a month, I get together with some other writers. We pull a prompt from an envelope and write for 30 minutes, then read to each other and chat. Sometimes I have to cogitate before coming up with something to write. Not this time. I plunged […]
Each morning, when the weather is nice, I sit on my porch and eat my snack while my second cup of coffee perks. It’s now late June. The yard looks lush and at peak greenery. The mountain laurel are flowering—white and pink snowballs covering the bushes. The smaller sheep laurel dots the surrounding green with […]
“As a matter of constitutional substance, the majority’s opinion has all the flaws its method would suggest. Because laws in 1868 deprived women of any control over their bodies, the majority approves States doing so today. Because those laws prevented women from charting the course of their own lives, the majority says States can do […]
At heart I’m a nature girl, so it was hard to write a novel that takes place mostly on a space ship. In Endurance, Captain Lyn Randall even laments about wanting to hear bird song and feel the wind. It’s summer now here in New England and the days are long. I’ll wake up at […]
Elaine Burnes 