Upon the Return/Slice of Heaven

Nancy FlynnApostrophe Blog Archive, Gardening, Home, Musings

I wake to rain. I am on my hands and worthless knees. I pry and pare back twinflower leaves, free the groundcovers: kinnick-kinnick, thimbleberry, and native wintergreen. Dig and prune. Command the dahlias to grow aligned with their bamboo stakes. My fingernails are crescents of dirt. All I care is to breathe, hidden beneath the reach and lean of these tall, tall western Oregon trees. Last night in the rain, the emperor gong rang…

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I Come From…

Nancy FlynnApostrophe Blog Archive, Home, Writing

Here is a simple prompt that can be useful for generating lots of specific detail—memories, images, family history—that can then be mined for creative writing work. I made this list a while back, oh maybe in 2005. Maybe it’s time for me to revisit this prompt again!…

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Perfecting the Third-Person Author Bio…

Nancy FlynnApostrophe Blog Archive, Author Interview, Writing

Some journals want brief ones—fifty words and no more—and you begin to worry you will somehow be punished if you go over the limit. Others let you ramble on and on, a veritable laundry list of publications and schools attended. Over the years, I’ve tried a number of approaches…

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