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What Can I Do: Part 4 (or just one more)

Do you call those without housing “the homeless”? Do you talk about “entitlements”? When someone commits a crime, do you respond with “thugs”? James Deke Pope, who has served on the Community Advisory Board of Memphis’s Africa in April, suggests we pay attention to the language we use and change it if...

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Do You Know New Orleans?

Do you know the French Quarter? St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square Do you know it more than Mardis Gras Day? Learning Learning more Learning still Do you know it as a literary place? Faulkner House Books Pirate’s Alley where William Faulkner lived and wrote The city of Tennessee Williams and John Kennedy O’Toole               What...

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Making Paper

You start with scrap paper. In my limited experience, you must be very intentional or scrap paper will turn out grey. So I focused on bright yellow papers and collected the gold foil off Hershey candies. In the service of my latest adventure, I ate a lot of Hershey candies. I’m such a selfless person! I ripped the paper into shreds, whereupon...

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Lucky Seven

It began on the veranda of the Gibson Inn in Apalachicola, Florida, the town locals call Apalach, where oysters once reigned and the river whispers of pirate ships disappearing in the streaky dawn. Boats on ol’ Apalach In the waning heat of a summer afternoon in 2008, I joined my husband on the second floor porch of the hotel whose bar...

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The Roller Coaster of Writing

When you’re waiting at the gate and it swings open and you rush forward, your sneakers squinching on the spilled strawberry shakes, and, frantic, you skim through your choices—this car, no this car—only to be forced by the crowd into a red-cushioned car where the attendant slams the bar in place and you test it as well—never trust anybody,...

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Taking It Up a Notch

Finished. Yeah, right. Anyway, I’ve finished reading The Bone Trench out loud. That took nine days. This weekend, I reworked a query letter and wrote a new synopsis, one page. These two documents have now been sent to my paid editor Gretchen so she can work her magic. I don’t want to burden you with the entire documents. But here’s...

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