storyfires

Some thoughts on how I write: I'm inspired by early morning and sundown--those times when the air changes color--also rain, snow, and fog. It must be the mystical mist. Or maybe it's just that when the world takes on a different look, it's easy to imagine that it's not its own usual self. And that flips on the story-making switch somewhere inside my head. A lot of my ideas come when I'm doing something else--hiking, walking the dog, sweeping the floor. My favorite Albert Einstein quote, on his Theory of Relativity: "I thought of that while riding my bike." Some of my best brainstorms, too, (nothing so huge as Relativity) strike while I'm peddling up the canyon on my bicycle. Right on. Me and Al. Still, I don't get a lot of ideas away from the computer without putting in the hours in front of the screen. Here's another quote I like, by Hemingway, I think: "I never write unless I am inspired. Luckily, I am inspired every morning at eig

I've discovered Gerard Manley Hopkins feels the same way I do about thrushes. He very kindly wrote me some thrush-themed lines of poetry 120 years or so in advance to go along with my book, Thrushbeard. Here it is, an excerpt from "Spring," by Hopkins: "Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing..."