It’s spring. Well not officially, but with the time change and the (fairly) beautiful weather here in Colorado, I am feeling the primavera, and in its honor, I would like to share the best gardening book of last year.

Permaculture is one of my favorite gardening philosophies, and though it is an incredibly simple and understandable series of concepts–revolving around mimicking the way that plants grow in nature, paying attention to the landscape around you for clues on how to best implement growing techniques, and creating relationships with plants and animals that are mutually beneficial–many people think that permaculture is very complex or that it works okay for farmers but isn’t applicable to backyard gardeners. “Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture”  will quickly disabuse you of that notion.  Author Toby Hemenway, a professor at Portland State University in Oregon, provides an easy to read and informative  understanding of permaculture principles and how to apply them to building and maintaining a sustainable permaculture practice in your home yard. With both beginner and advanced practices and plenty of pictures and diagrams, this book has enough information for novices and master gardeners alike. I highly recommend “Gaia’s Garden” as a must read before you plant your garden this spring and go– to guide for all the seasons to come.

You know that bump on the upper inside corner of your middle finger, the one you got as a kid from all the cursive handwriting in school? Do you still have it? Did you ever? Experts now say that the ‘writer’s bump’ or callus is almost completely disappearing, what with the rise of computers and the fact that students no longer seriously learn the Palmer method of cursive handwriting in school. Which got me to thinking–has the rise in using computers to type affected the quality and/or output of creative writing? In what way has it changed what we write and are there benefits to switching back to longhand? CONTINUE READING…..

Want something quick but razor sharp and very  unique? Look no farther than Mary Robison.  I tore through her newest novel “One D.O.A., One on the Way” this week and picked up another– “Why Did I Ever”– because I was so impressed. Reminiscent of authors like Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie, Robison’s minimalist style is an exercise in gorgeous wordsmithing. There’s also a veneer of southern gothic in these books, probably due to Robison’s upbringing in Mississippi and her professorships at southern universities. “One D.O.A., One on the Way” captures the chaos of post-Katrina New Orleans in appropriately fractured mini-paragraphs, building the tension so sneakily that we are shocked by its inevitable conclusion.

“Why Did I Ever” is its worthy predecessor, having been the book that pioneered Robinson’s minimalist style (suffering from an extended case of writer’s block, she scrawled the novel on index cards and then strung them together). It’s protagonist, named Money, dictates the slow crumbling of her word, the violent assault of her son, and her long drives to nowhere. Written with an elegance and sharpness that literally takes my breath away, I am racing through this book, unable to put it down at night.

Robison is an accessible writer, her books hauntingly unique. At least once as I read these books, I closed my eyes in jealousy at a wickedly perfect or perversely beautiful sentence.

In Greek mythology, the muses were the nine daughters of the god Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory.  They were thought to inspire the creation of literature and the arts and transmit the knowledge of poetry, history, dance, astronomy, music, and comedy. Their legacy is threaded through modern language with words such as ‘museum’, ‘musing’ and ‘amused’.  It is, however, most apparent in the seriousness that artists and writers give to finding ‘their muse’. What does this mean and how can finding your muse improve your writing?

CONTINUE READING…..

There are as many writing books as there are writers looking to get inspired by them.  And while I am a believer in the  old adage that there is only one rule for writing–if it works–I do think that some of these books give great advice on the process of writing and offer support for what is, at heart, a lonely and self-reflective art. Three of my all time favorite books on the craft of writing:

‘Writing Down the Bones’ by Natalie Goldberg    was one of the first writing books I ever  read    and it is still a go to    reference when I am  in  need of support and sustenance.    Both a  practitioner of Zen and a writer, her tips,  stories, and exercises are rooted in an  expansive and inspirational view of the self as    artist and a deep connection with life. This is a  great guide for those who write as an act of self  expression, discovery, and healing. It’s very  free form though I always found the exercises  to be extremely helpful to get me started when  I was stuck with writer’s block. Her other books  on writing as well as her memoirs are worth  picking up as well.

Brenda  Ueland’s ‘If You Want to Write: a Book About Art, Independence, and Spirit’ is, to me, the ultimate writing book. It is a must read for beginning writers, for those who have been discouraged, and for those who are looking to revisit what creativity really means. A journalist, author, and all around extraordinarily interesting woman, Ueland’s guide offers up several points to consider when writing but it’s also very supportive of everybody’s creativity. One of my favorite quotes by Ueland is “I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on  a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. ”

This third book is one that helped me understand the balance of writing. ‘The Writing Life’ by Annie Dillard is, like all of her work, clear eyed, unsentimental, meaty–a resource that I come back to in order to remind me why I write, who it’s for, and both how thankless a task it can be and how beautiful a life it creates. If you haven’t read anything by Dillard, please go out and find either ‘Holy the Firm’ or ‘Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek’  and immerse yourself in the perfect individuality of the ordinary world she presents.