Sparks

A Little Louder, Please

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. A Little Louder, Please Susan Zahl Bono Christmas 2005 I must be going deaf. It’s the season when yuletide TV ads are louder and brighter than the shows they’re interrupting, but I don’t seem to be hearing their message. December is swinging into its second week and I haven’t bought any presents. Last weekend, my husband wrestled the fake tree into the living room and wrapped it with lights, but if that’s as far as we get, I’m not going to be heartbroken about it. At night with those little lights glowing, I can almost forget the ornaments are missing. These are my dark ages. My kids are too old to believe in Santa and too young to make grandchildren. They stopped caring about trees and holiday trappings about the time we gave in to their…

Sparks

Dad

By Susan Bono “That’s quite a sack of rocks you’re carrying, sweetie,” my father’s friend Bruce said more than once during phone calls last year. It was his way of acknowledging how heavily Dad’s poor health, hard-headedness and self-imposed isolation weighed on me. But I also took it as a tribute to Dad’s stubbornness and my strength, too. “Dumb as a rock” never made much sense to me, since stone strikes me as having its own unassailable intelligence. Its ability to endure illustrates its genius. I have never believed in the ability to factor equations or compose sonnets was proof of brain power, although I shared with Dad the idea that someone with rocks in his head was lacking in foresight and flexibility. Rocks may be smart, but they are slow. Time measured in stone is something else again. There were moments during my dad’s dying that were as slow…

Guest Bloggers

When Tough Love becomes True Love

This past year has been difficult for me (Marlene), not just during the long month of November. I have been playing catch up all year, trying to whittle down my never-ending to-do list. Susan Bono’s guest blog post reminds me to stop, notice, and savor the moment. Susan writes: Even those of us who start the day with a list know what it’s like when unplanned-for events start coming our way. In spite of our intentions, we start tackling the unscheduled instead of working on what we had planned. Emergencies come up, of course; we can’t control everything. No one can plan for bad news or times we are suddenly needed. But the list of unanticipated tasks is endless, and after a while, we just start doing what comes to us, instead of what we had intended. You should have days when you follow your bliss. In fact, have them…

Places to submit

What do Contest Judges Look for?

Recently I was one of three judges for a writing contest. We didn’t agree during the first round of reading on the winners. It took re-reading and much discussion to select the three winners. So that got me to thinking. What do contest judges look for when choosing winning entries? My fellow judges and I came up with: Make sure to follow the guidelines. They aren’t arbitrary. The guidelines are specific for a reason. Make sure to follow the criteria of what genre the contest is. Don’t submit memoir if the contest is fiction. Even though the judges may not be able to tell for sure if something is fiction or memoir . . . if it feels like memoir, it probably is. And that won’t work in a fiction contest. The winning entries that stood out excelled in creative writing and well-crafted stories. The writing and stories were compelling,…

Book Reviews

The Marvelous Journals of Miss Virginia Pettingill by Gilbert Mansergh

The Marvelous Journals of Miss Virginia Pettingill, reviewed by Susan Bono: I expected to be charmed by the outgoing and adventurous Ginny Pettingill, a 7th grader who uses her journals to capture her own personal discoveries as well as portray life in Gloucester, MA, shortly after WWI. The fact that the narrator is fashioned after the author’s mother added extra piquancy to the read—did the real Virginia have the gift of sight? Was she really a witness to the dawn of the “talkies” and could she have organized one of the first beach cleanups? I loved how the delights of the past were brought to life, but I was also struck by the shadow side of this lull between wars. It was indeed a time of tremendous excitement and progress—automobiles and motion pictures, Prohibition and Women’s Rights. There were new inventions, like Kotex and electric Christmas lights. But the people…