Reading, writing...that's what I do.

Love for the printed word, love and belief in ideas.

Adding Flesh to the Bones of Your Story Part One

December 7, 2025 2 Comments

I’m not a painter, but I imagine that when an artist gets the glimmer of an idea, despite the medium, she does a sketch or an outline, and keeps it in a notebook. It’s a beginning that may become the focal point of the work. But what is later seen in the art studio or the museum months, years later, is far from that seed, that beginning. Writers also have to start somewhere.

BEGINNINGS

Maybe your initial start is the vision of a character, a voice in your head: someone’s pain or sorrowful experience, someone’s confession or the telling of a climactic achievement. Maybe the voice presents a goal that grows, speaks to you so often, you find yourself taking notes at odd hours of the day—and night. The seed could also be a fully-formed scene, so that when you sit down to write, it comes onto the page with clear dialogue, growing as you write, the characters conforming to how you imagined them. Because this is yours; this is the story you want to write. It’s coming together. Your book, article, poem is alive, but needs so much more; like a lump of clay or a sketch on paper, your story is taking shape, so that you feel excitement when you sit down to work ..all part of the process. You are a writer. (or maybe an artist etc)

DEFINITIONS FOR WRITERS

Whether a Pantser or Plotter, writers start by making decisions about the basic story–and we then become eager to forge ahead, can’t wait to get back to the keyboard. There are character traits to flesh out, worlds to create, the power of the keyboard becoming heady: where will our characters live, travel? Who will they love or hate? Will they have an unusual occupation, be homeless, physically or mentally challenged? How will the pages we write affect our readers’ emotions? Can you make them laugh, cry, cringe–maybe even dream they are living the lives you are creating?

HOW AND WHY WE DO THIS

Novels build around a basic plot that’s going to tell an amazing story. But as it goes to the page, you find yourself adding more. It grows, sometimes it even becomes unruly. You have to go back, you have to cut. You are giving the work shape, because you have another important goal: to dig down, give your story the depth that Readers desire.

STEPS TO TAKE…

There’s no time-line to this process. Each of us works in our own way. Maybe you write the basic story from page one to the end to see how the plot works out. Maybe you aren’t even sure of your ending, but then an idea hits. Maybe you add it in right away, or you make a file to peruse later, see how this new idea can be incorporated. The process is yours. Stick with it, though I am only highlighting some methods that will help you mine ideas, deepen your story.

SCENE BUILDING can deepen your story. During a workshop, I discovered I wasn’t using that concept to my advantage. My novel needed that device to bring the reader into the story. And because my story contained a drawing created by the child who goes missing, why not have the parents frame the drawing, then argue about whether to keep it in the kitchen or store it somewhere. The drawing becomes a symbol of how the mother and father are dealing with this crisis. The mother takes the drawing done; the father gets angry and hangs it back up, encouraging her to believe that their child will be found.

PLACE IS ALSO WORLD BUILDING. Setting your character in a place where she can hear the ocean or the traffic on Michigan Avenue, smell pizza from the restaurant across the street or hear a basketball bouncing on the floor of the apartment above—will pull your reader in.

Place is where a character lives, why she stays or leaves. Place defines aspects of personality, and can produce incredible tension.

My WIP (work in progress) takes place in the North Side Chicago neighborhood where I lived for four years. First-hand experience helps, but is not necessary. Your writing can thrive using any place in the world—with research—your keyboard being your plane, bus, ship. Your character’s attachment, his or her’s fear, anxiety or excitement about the place that you create does not need real geography. It only needs your creative imagination. Because the emotions we experience in life could occur anywhere…so though my background is Chicago, Des Moines, Iowa, and Westlake Village, California, the basic emotions that my characters must deal with could apply to people living in London, Paris, wherever. Bottom line: deepen your writing on the page; create your character’s emotional connection to place. Thanks for reading, and if you are currently writing a novel, short story, or your life story, I hope some of the above will help.

Part Two next week

I review: THE ARTIST’S HOUSE, a gift of poetry and art from Rachel Dacus.

November 30, 2025 4 Comments

Where to begin. Reviewers often toss off words like amazing, stunning, a jewel to purchase and keep. Well…yes to all being true for this collection of poetry and art…and much much more.

Rachel’s drawing of a wise and imperious owl fills a page opposite her book dedication, that reads: To my Teachers, and the artists who give all for love, and show me the newest way to be.

Rachel has divided this lovely book into sections: Portraiture, Traveling with the Elders, Poetry Club, and Awakening on a Dark Road.

THE BEGINNING

I was honored when Rachel sent me this work, asking me to write a review. Though I majored in English Literature in college, poetry has always been more difficult for me. Even early on, the brevity of some poems tricked me into thinking, that can’t be so difficult, a few lines, some rhyme, give it a try.

But I came to realize, that those elements make poetry even more concentrated, more challenging than prose. Creating poetry is intense work, brain work, something I struggled with. In college, I admit to taking a poetry class, thinking…ah yes, an easy A. I was so wrong. Brevity with meaning is a task that outweighs long paragraphs filled with stunning word choices. Thus I believe …

Rachel Dacus is an amazing poet, choosing her words to explore ideas…every poem a gift that touches, informs and shines.

Her Table of Contents has four sections.

The first is PORTRAITURE, from which the following two poems speak of joy and sorrow in life and in art.

RESCUED AGAIN After Cezanne, Still Life with Apples, First stanza

Surrounded by banks of roses

practicing for their second bloom,

again I’ve been recused. I had a hard start,

but the crab apples plummet with audible plop

onto the lush lawn. Rosy pearls

of transformation always at hand

if I simply remember the steps.

Once recused, always recused.

I GET OVER MYSELF Rachel writes: After Twyla Tharp’s ballet “In the Upper Room”

Well I did it. Like the cow that jumped

his moon shot, I got this body over

my old shape of personality and slipped out

while I wasn’t watching. I gave up

habits and found it freeing to be fluid.

Each day I awake nearly boneless.

A stumble can become a twirl,

and crying is as easy as swimming

With Hawaiian sea turtles.

Other Sections listed in Rachel’s Table of Contents are: Traveling with Elders, Poetry Club, and Awakening on a Dark Road.

Rachel is also an artist, the pages of this lovely book filled with her white and black sketches, and even a scattering of colorful photos.

IN CONCLUSION

I have also chosen a few of my favorite lines of poetry to inspire you, entice you to purchase this creative work. Rachel’s black and white drawings and her POETRY ON ART AND LOVE are a gift to you. I truly cannot say enough about this lovely book, or show you what is awaiting you when you open to the first page. Thanks for reading.

Remembering Toni Morrison

November 23, 2025 11 Comments

For me, reading has always been nourishment—the first stack of easy-reading books from our local Chicago library; then the heft of assigned books from high school and college teachers and professors. And always, the answer to the eternal question: What would you like for your birthday? Books. Reading is beauty, reality, other worlds; reading increases widespread understanding, stimulates questioning, learning. And in 2018, because I read widely, I was alerted to an attack against reading itself.

The attack came in the form of letters to the editor in our local newspaper. Week after week, people in my community were complaining about assigned fiction and non-fiction works at our local high school in West Lake Village, California. The books were: David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and Toni Morrison’s Sula.

These letter writers really went after Sula, as if this beautiful, honest book would change or damage the sexuality of every young person who read it. During this barrage of letter writing, I even considered the possibility that someone was prompting these writers, even funding them. (I was right.)

I wrote my own letter to the editor, supporting all three books, stressing that I had taught high school English and asking: didn’t these people realize that guiding students through difficult subject matter was how they would grow to become responsible adults?

Tested and approved high school curriculum is always far better than reading “stuff” on the internet, where students can find articles on any sexual topic—and when they did, they most likely would not reveal what they had read, possibly becoming confused with no one to guide them or provide thoughtful understanding. The letter writers didn’t understand the very purpose of high school literature classes. They communicated narrow mindedness and prejudice. ( unfortunately they still do…the Heritage Foundation has money and power.)

I discussed the situation with the group of progressive women I belonged to. We decided, that like Tip O’Neill believed, politics is local. We would fight this. We researched, getting the names of the candidates for the school board who supported the current reading program. We interviewed each of them, held a garage sale, raised money and gave our proceeds to these candidates.

I thought of our efforts this past week when Toni Morrison died at the age of eighty-eight. Toni Morrison, the author of Sula, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, A Mercy and many others. Toni Morrison, who in 1993 became the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature and was lauded for being a writer “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” Yes, a reality high school students need to know! Being a woman of color, Morrison focused on language—how it can affect and deepen our American reality. If we do not have the freedom to express ourselves in language and to reveal the truths of our history, we are lost.

Morrison’s Fable of Children

In her Nobel Acceptance speech, Morrison told this story: Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise. …the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away…

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them…her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”

She does not answer, and the question is repeated. Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive. Finally, the old woman speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”

Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.

What the blind woman has done is shift the power that these seeing people might have over her, and instead is reprimanding them for mocking her, but also for the life they might have sacrificed to do so. Morrison then extrapolated on the purpose of her story.

I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer.
She is worried about how the language she dreams in, was given to her at birth, is handled, put into service, even withheld from her for certain nefarious purposes.
Being a writer, she thinks of language partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as agency — as an act with consequences.
So, the question the children put to her: “Is it living or dead?” is not unreal because she thinks of language as susceptible to death, erasure; and certainly, imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will.
She believes that if the bird in the hands of her visitors is dead the custodians are responsible for the corpse.

Morrison’s Assignment

As writers, we have been left with a task, one Morrison wants us to aspire to. She writes: Word-work is sublime … because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn (paint) the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.

An amazing and worthwhile task.

And finally: all the candidates that we supported for the school board won. The high school students in my school district were finally able to read Toni Morrison. I believe we all should.

(Thanks to Brain Pickings’ article Toni Morrison and the Power of Language, which was a resource for this piece. It first appeared on WRITER UNBOXED.)

A Gentle Reminder on the L&D Unit…(Labor and Delivery)

November 16, 2025 4 Comments

Go placidly amid the laboring patients, and remember what peace there may be in coffee breaks. As far as possible and without surrender, be on good terms with the unit secretary, for she controls everything. Speak Lamaze quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even coaches who sit watching TV, occasionally mumbling “breathe honey, breathe”; they too have their story.

Take not the words of loud and aggressive patients to heart; an apology often follows delivery. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be those who mistake a patient for complete when she’s really only two centimeters! Enjoy each delivery as if it were your first. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of the modern health care system. (So true)

Exercise caution in your charting; for the world is full of lawyers! But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive to successfully VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign knowledge. It is better to ask a stupid question than to make a stupid mistake. And do not be cynical about screaming primips (first baby) at one centimeter; for in the face of all pain and disenchantment they are as perennial as nursing students.

Take kindly the counsel of the unit manager, for she is just doing her job. Nurture the accumulation of overtime to shield you in times of low census. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of the prospect of not getting your patient delivered in time to watch Star Trek (or substitute something else)! Beyond a wholesome firmness, be gentle with your patients. You are a labor and delivery nurse, no less than the obstetricians and the midwives. You have a right to be here!

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe will fall apart as soon as you sign out. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him or Her to be, and whatever labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of shift change, keep peace with your soul.

Because with all its sham, drudgery, and popcorn trodden in the carpet, this is still a beautiful unit. So be careful. Strive to be happy, and don’t go home with the narc keys in your pocket!

THANKS TO THE AUTHOR, RAY SPOONER

PS Yes I love this. And though I haven’t worked on an L&D unit for a very long time, it still speaks to me. And… ALWAYS BE KIND TO YOUR NURSE.

I’M SORRY FOR MY LOSS Part Two

November 9, 2025 6 Comments

THE STORIES WE TELL: The Authors Refer to it as: A QUIET RIOT

When should a woman reveal that she is pregnant? Kate Watson writes in Scarlet A: Ethics, Law and Politics of Ordinary Abortion, referred to the silence that often accompanies the realization that one is pregnant…the “cultural confinement period” …a version of the Victorian rule that women could not go out in public when visibly pregnant.

Wow, what would they say today? In our culture, we might guess that keeping a new pregnancy a secret until it is established and visible, means either the woman is making sure all is well, or she is admitting, “I didn’t want this, I don’t know what to do.”

The authors also stress that pregnancy loss is not uncommon: between ½ and 1/3 of women will experience a pregnancy loss; one in four women will have an abortion.

Misunderstanding as to what causes a miscarriage is also widespread. Lifting a heavy object, using an IUD or birth control were once popular explanations for a miscarriage. But at least half of miscarriages are due to chromosomal issues, a genetic mismatch…that cannot be controlled. The authors then underline that it is comical, that many pregnant women wait until their first trimester to move the fridge to the basement. Really?? But maybe this is a joke I have not encountered!

What readers do need to know, is that there is a bounty of information, advice and expertly-presented research in I’m Sorry for My Loss. As a former Labor and Delivery RN, I applaud not only the authors personal strength and positivity, but also their excellent and thorough research. This book required belief in the project, persistence in doing research, asking questions, and getting answers: the latter not easy when questioning some doctors!

Long and Little are to be applauded for their openness, honesty, and the ability to share their own experiences, their own pain. The book is beautifully organized and well-researched, truly a handbook for all women, accessible and easy to read, a guide proving that personal revelations help support female understanding and female hope.

The book also provides a clear message: women, no matter their age, background or connection to doctors and other medical staff, will often need to rely on personal strength. And more importantly, they must rely on and USE their ability to ASK questions. Medical people are people. Don’t hesitate. Ask questions, any question, especially if you are experiencing sorrow and anxiety. And after reading this guide, I hope there will be a voice in your head, one urging you to ask questions, to not hold back. When visiting with a doctor, midwife or doula, you might carry with you a copy of the chapter: PULL YOURSELF UP BY YOUR OVARIES…just as a reminder!

And remember: this is book of warmth and encouragement. It is also a book of the realities of loss…as the title emphasizes. I encourage every woman of child-bearing age to read this well researched and honest look at Women’s Healthcare. Whether you have just started to menstruate, want to be pregnant, have already given birth or are going through “the change”, information about your female body, your ability to reproduce, must be part of you. This book can act like a shield: because with information, your ability to understand reproduction, pregnancy and birth is enhanced. You have always had the strength to make you own choices…now you have more tools. Now you will agree: your female strengths MUST BE PROTECTED.

THANK SO MUCH FOR READING. And PS If you have a daughter or daughters, surely there are parts of this book you will want them to read.

I’m Sorry for My Loss PART ONE

November 2, 2025 12 Comments

Review: Elizabeth A. Havey

The cover of this amazing, well-researched, open-hearted book, written by Rebecca Little and Collen Long, acts as a preview for the reader…but only if you take your time, look carefully, and open both heart and mind.

The book’s title, I’M SORRY FOR MY….LOSS, indicates that this is a serious, well-researched work, one that discusses women’s health and pregnancy. This well-researched book focuses on things that can go wrong, and thus permanently affecting a woman’s life and her reproductive future. The writers intent, which they have definitely achieved, is to take a hard, well-researched look at women’s health and a women’s physiology, both of which are known to NOT always deliver the longed-for child.

I’M SORRY FOR MY LOSS examines the specific health needs of women, but also the lack of CARE that women in these changing times often experience at the hands of both male and female gynecologists. If you saw this book online or in a bookstore…and if you were hesitating, don’t! Or maybe you are uncertain as to the approach of these authors. If so, keep reading. Knowledge is power, this being 400 plus pages of research and personal experience that examines and presents in detail: Miscarriage, Stillbirth, Abortion, Patient Rights, even Grief— all amazing information that EVERY woman of reproductive age needs.

LONG AND LITTLE: We Write from Experience

There is one major difference that makes this book extraordinary in content and readability: the writers aren’t summarizing research and interviews. They’re writing from painful and difficult personal experience, in addition to doing research before, during and after pregnancy. In our current cultural climate, the work of these two writers and its resultant statements emphasize and inform us of the dead ends, the outright ignorance and arrogance that we women have endured, are still enduring and might once again encounter, when seeking healthcare for our female bodies.

Example: Pregnancy Loss. It is hard to believe, that in the wealthy United States of America, we still have an embarrassingly high rate of infant mortality, and that this rate is expected to rise in the aftermath of the Supreme Court reversing abortion protection. Little and Long write that the United States has 32.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, a shocking rate. The United Kingdom is the next closest, their numbers being much lower:10.9 per 100,000 births. And for Black women in the United States…a frightening 69.9 deaths per 100,00 births. Little and Long: “This data of Black women…makes them nearly three times more likely to die than white women during pregnancy or within a year of the end of the pregnancy. Black women are also far more likely to suffer miscarriage, stillbirth, and other complications.”

The authors write that NONE of this reflects well on our healthcare system. Anushay Hossain, in her book Pain Gap, makes a strong case as to how women of color are treated: “Maternal mortality ratios tell us how well a country’s healthcare system in general is functioning. In America, our maternal mortality rates are a stark reminder of how little we actually value women’s health.”

Little and Long quote Dr. Sarah Prager, an ob-gyn and professor at the University of Washington: “It’s really under-appreciated that pregnancy is dangerous.” Prager stresses that this danger includes all women, but especially women of color. A recent study of Black women in the U.S. revealed that impact: “Research on obstetric health inequities is notable, with Black communities experiencing higher rates of preterm birth, low birth weight, infant mortality, and maternal mortality.”

RACISM and WOMEN’S HEALTHCARE

The authors also quote Jamila Taylor, a reproductive rights advocate. “Dealing with racism in our daily lives is a major factor in our health and well-being. The experience of racism makes Black people sick, whether it’s mental and emotional health or even physical health.”

Taylor states that many Black women have approached her, admitting they are afraid to get pregnant, they worry they will not survive it. This fear dates back to historically mistrusting white doctors: the Tuskegee Institute promoting forced sterilizations; Henrietta Lacks, her family not knowing for years that her blood and tissues were being used for experimentation. And the most frightening…statistics revealing that the infant mortality rate of Black infants is only cut in half when women are cared for by Black doctors.

And please consider Tori Bowie, an Olympic gold medal sprinter, who died while pregnant, her white doctors refusing to truly listen to her. They just needed to do simple testing, thus finding: elevated blood pressure, protein in her urine. They needed to listen to her complaints: headaches, shortness of breath—all classic symptoms of pre-eclampsia. Bowie was eight months pregnant when she died. Other black athletes have admitted that their doctors ignored physical complaints. Thus, Little and Long conclude: “If doctors won’t pay attention to Black athletes, then Black women in general don’t stand a chance.”

WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND GRIEF

Now, because of DOBBS, there are more women seeking abortions, the authors providing research concerning what some might call, THE DOBBS EFFECT.

The “gold standard” in medical miscarriage management is the abortion regimen—mifepristone combined with misoprostol. But due to the FDA’s extra regulation of mifepristone (and numerous lawsuits), many patients are now offered only misoprostol. There is also disagreement in timing. The FDA: use allowed up to 9 weeks. The World Health Organization: use allowed up to 12 weeks. The writers believe that in states where a procedure is not available, more pregnant woman will be forced to rely on medication even later in a pregnancy. But after Row fell, and because of rape, Morgan Nuzzo, who is trained in all-trimester abortions, created a clinic in Maryland. She now reports a heart-breaking reality: seeing children every week, some as young as nine. Her clinic also takes care of people who have developed disabilities and/or are nonverbal. The clinic keeps tissue samples for pathology, so detectives can try to locate these rapists.

ABORTION, STILLBIRTH

Many restrictive laws have been heavily influenced by Evangelical Christianity, and that includes the doctrine stating that women should suffer punishment for original sin. If you die in childbirth or because of an abortion, it’s God’s will. Don’t blame them, blame Eve, ye old original bitch.

Jen Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council under President Biden, told authors Long and Little: “There is a strong contingent of extreme, mostly politicians, but also judges, who either don’t see or don’t want to see the effect these laws are having on women’s health care more generally.” Klein then added: “Pregnancy loss of very wanted pregnancies is one example at the heart of the problem.”

Yes, it is. The authors have also explored another aspect of women, pregnancy and THE LAW, citing a case in 1999, when Regina McKnight became the first woman in the U.S. to be prosecuted and convicted for having a stillborn…this according to a legal scholar, Michele Goodwin. Knight served a decade in prison before her conviction was overturned, the prosecutor saying he wanted to make her an example: “If you kill a child by showing extreme indifference to human life, then you’re guilty of homicide by child abuse…”

McKnight’s conviction was eventually overturned in 2008, due to faulty scientific evidence presented at the trial…though by then, she had already served a decade in prison. This, because many people in power are ignorant concerning pregnancy, birth and postpartum. They are literally harming pregnant and postpartum women with laws created out of ignorance…laws made by men who know how to get a woman pregnant, but who truly do not understand the biology of pregnancy and birth. (My note: Please read that again, that last sentence.)

Because of intense research, and personal experience, Little and Long have written a book that presents facts, history related to pregnancy, loss, and other elements subsumed in those categories. It is a personal work, a book of knowledge, but also great caring. The authors stress that many women who have lost a pregnancy go on to help with charity events, their work done in their baby’s name. Women also lobby for changes in the system. Little and Long beautifully refer to their efforts as “parenting a legacy”.

Part Two next week

Reading, writing...that's what I do.

Adding Flesh to the Bones of Your Story Part One