Time is Running Out

To register for Summer in Words 2013

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ou don’t want to miss the stellar line up of professionals and bestselling authors. There are only 6 places left so if you’re planning on registering, please do so soon.   Expect craft workshops that you can immediately put to use and inspiration that will propel you to your next steps. If you’re staying at the Hallmark Inn & Resort, make your reservation by May 20^th to receive the group rate.

Hallmark Inn: 1-888-448-4449

This year’s theme: Deep as the Ocean

Keynote Speaker: Jonathan Evison

Open Submissions for Airlie Press through May 31

This is the last month of Airlie Press's open reading period for new books. As advisory board member Dorianne Laux puts it, Airlie is "a tribe of poets who ferret out new voices to add to the choir of sustaining voices we long to hear." To be considered for publication in fall 2015, send full-length poetry manuscripts (65-80 pages) to Airlie Press.

Full guidelines can be downloaded by going to http://airliepress.org/join-us where you can also read about our selection process and what it means to be part of a collective press.

Each year we are amazed by the rich trove of literary talent in the Northwest. We hope you will consider adding your voice to the choir!

The Editors
Airlie Press

Inspiration from Truman Capote

Truman Capote is a writer who has influenced me a lot with his graceful sentences and acute observations. Here are some quotes about writing that will perhaps pique your interest in reading his works. I especially recommend A Christmas Story.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.


The true beloveds of this world are in their lover’s eyes, lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child’s Sunday, lost voices, one’s favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory. (Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1948)

Read like a Writer

With discernment, analysis. Underling, noting, puzzling.

If you believe you need help in close reading check out Francine Prose’s, Reading Like A Writer, A Guide for People who Love Books and for Those who Want to Write Them. Prose writes fiction and her fourteen novels include Blue Angel and A Changed Man. She is also an essayist and has written nonfiction books and children’s books. There are many reasons why you might want to read this book. First, Prose is a passionate reader and gifted writer so the language is gorgeous. She knows her way around a metaphor and anchors understanding with solid examples from her life and dozens of excerpts from published works to make her points.

She has taught a lot and the book is chocked full of techniques and wisdom she’s passed along to her students such as, “The two most important things I told them, were observation and consciousness. Keep your eyes open, see clearly, think about what you see, ask yourself what it means….in most cases the fact remains: the wider and deeper your observational range, the better, the more interestingingly and truthfully you’ll write.” 

In her humorous chapter about what she learned from reading Chekov, she passes along fiction lessons from a class she taught in the late 1980s while she was reading Chekov’s short stories on her commute home. The chapter describes how his stories continually disproved the lessons she was teaching, until finally, she confesses, “By now, I had learned my lesson. I began telling my class to read Chekhov instead of listening to me.”

Prose is simply a brainiac, with thoughtful and in-depth explorations of topics.  She’s also amazingly well read and quotes a diverse array of writers including the most enduring writers like Samuel Beckett, Jane Austen, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert and George Elliot. But she also uses a segment from J.D.Salinger’s Franny and Zooey to illustrate the importance of specific details, she quotes John Le Carre´ on using dialogue to advance the plot; a David Green story for how dialogue creates subtext, and a Philip Roth story for the effectiveness of a gestures.

On her last page she advises: "If we want to write, it makes sense to read—and to read like a writer. If wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see them the way a rose gardener would.”

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart