Category Archive Writing

ByGD

Blue Cheese … And Then

800px-Salad_dressingI think blue cheese salad dressing is the key to good storytelling.

Blue cheese was my favorite dressing when I was growing up, until I found out the “blue” was mold. There were streaks of decay in my favorite food! It was almost enough to make me stop eating it. But it was so good I couldn’t resist, and eventually I realized that I didn’t like blue cheese despite the mold, but because of it. The characteristic blue cheese tang came from the mold. The decay threaded throughout the cheese was part of the perfection. Read More

ByGD

Strictly For the Completist

IMG_20150331_180828851Looking at my own garden, it’s hard to believe I’m supposed to be an expert. I certainly do let life get in the way of the consistency that gardens (like children) require to thrive. But I do have an M.S. in horticulture that has been growing dusty on a bookcase somewhere, and rather than let it go completely to waste, I have begun writing for a website called Dave’s Garden. I’m collecting pdfs of those articles here on the blog on a Stuff I Wrote page. If you have any interest in gardening, maybe you’d like to read some of them. I’ll try to update this page with new articles every month or so.

ByGD

On Crows and Craft, Or Something

I haven’t run a reblog post here in a while. Usually when I do, it’s when someone writes something that I’ve been thinking myself but haven’t figured out how to say yet. This time I did write about it, and after I hit “publish” I read something that made me think, “That’s what I meant to say!”

On Friday I wrote about signs. I got it partially right. I got that the crows in Seattle are more than just urban opportunists (they made their way into a post I wrote for Dave’s Garden last week, too…), and that it had something to do with developing as a writer. But author S.P. Sipal, whose new novel Southern Fried Wiccan (she had me at the title) has just been released, explained it so much better and more beautifully in a post on Adventures in YA Publishing. That blog is on a different platform, so I can’t embed it here, but I hope you will click through and read it – HERE.

And if you don’t know what we’re talking about with the crows, the story is HERE.

I just remembered that crows (specifically, Seattle-based crows) featured in the short stories read at the Reykjavik Writing Jam I attended last fall. I wish I could include one of those stories here, especially Karen Finneyfrock’s, in which the crows were significant, but I couldn’t find them online. I think they were only printed zine-style for attendees of the jam. Maybe that’s what got crows percolating in my brain. Or maybe it’s because they screech outside my window all day as I work (like right now). Or maybe the appearance of crows in tandem with creativity popping up everywhere in my universe lately is some kind of sign.

WritingJamI would like to include a picture of a crow here, but technology hates me this week and I’m just not going to put myself through that stress today. Instead, here is a picture of the stories I mentioned that include crows.

ByGD

I Heart the I Heart Reykjavik Blog

Cats of Reykjavik

Cats of Reykjavik

Can we talk about Iceland for a minute?

My obsession with all things Icelandic is no secret, and over the course of a three trips to the country I have developed a few intense loyalties. The KEX Hostel feels like home and I must soak at Laugardalslaug at least once each trip, even though I can’t really swim. Read More