Tag: Writing

WHEN THE STORY GOES WHERE IT WANTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Carmichael’s, the restaurant her family owns in my new novel, has me looking more closely at others.

Over recent years, I’ve been especially fascinated by the hippie outbreak and its legacy. We had a taste of what society could be and let it slip away, or so the story goes. In reality, nobody ever fit the hippie stereotype, and while the impression is that the movement died out, so many of its concerns continue – from environmental awareness and sustainable economics to racial and sexual equality to social justice activism to Asian and Native spiritual traditions to back-to-the-earth and natural living and so on. It’s a long list, actually.

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PLAYING WITH FIRST NAMES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments
Carmichael’s, the restaurant her family owns in my new novel, has me looking more closely at others.

Long before I ever anticipated what’s evolved into my newest novel, What’s Left, I ended my first published novel with a young woman named Diana, in part because I liked the two puns it allowed. Her husband-to-be, a student of Tibetan Buddhism, had returned to Indiana – and now he could boast of a love that allowed him to be in Diana as well as in Dhyana, or deep meditation.

Not that you have to understand Sanskrit to read it. Shouldn’t the mere hint of something exotic should suffice?

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MY LIFE AS A ROGUE, AS IT WERE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Being born in Aquarius, maybe it’s all too natural:

  1. Rogue scout troop (with all of our hiking, backpacking, and primitive camping – plus all the scoutmaster’s strictness).
  2. Rogue education, a patchwork of political science, literature, economics, sides of philosophy while aiming for the field of daily journalism.
  3. Rogue hippie.
  4. Rogue lover.
  5. Rogue ashram, with its decision to quit the world I’d known up till then.
  6. Rogue worship (this alternative Christianity).
  7. Rogue Quaker, too?
  8. Rogue career, mostly in out-of-the-way settings before abandoning the executive ladder to return to the ranks and a real life.
  9. Rogue poet, rogue novelist.
  10. Rogue blogger.

Maybe it makes sense.

~*~

Just how don’t you fit into expectations?

In open water on the Piscataqua River, Newington, New Hampshire.

Not that this fits into the theme, it’s just one more thing on my mind.

DO THEY HAVE TO BE SYMPATHETIC CHARACTERS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Carmichael’s, the restaurant her family owns in my new novel, has me looking more closely at others.

One of the conundrums I’m left with in my new novel, What’s Left: What if you don’t like her father, her deceased Baba, as she recovers him? (Or recovers from him.) Is it essential to your enjoyment of the story?

Or worse yet, what if you don’t like her?

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SHIFTING GEARS ON HIGHWAY ‘18

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

You no doubt noticed a new look at my suite of blogs here at WordPress during the past year. In midsummer I converted to four quite different templates – or what WordPress calls themes – each one a sharp new presentation for the unique material of the blogs. The process also prompted a redefinition of their separate identities.

Much of my literary attention last year focused on my newest novel, which underwent two major revisions and a cleanup reading – along with a new title. You’ll hear a lot more about it through the coming year. In fact, the Red Barn will be engaged in conversations about the many themes running through the big book. Look for the new Cassia’s World category.

Doing that has me anticipating fewer postings here – typically three a week, rather than seven to 10. To be frank, there were weeks when I felt things were getting way too hectic. Sometimes less really is more.

One other refinement: My Tendrils category will be getting more playful. I hope you like it – more way than one.

On the other sites, Chicken Farmer, I Still Love You is settling more fully into its inland New England character. More photos, mostly of historic brick mills, will accompany the serialization of my Big Inca novel, before giving way later in the year to poetry that fits the region.

As Light Is Sown steps up its pace to two postings a week, mostly short entries drawn from my books Religion Turned Upside Down and Stillwater. Consider it provocative inspiration. I hope.

While I’m not anticipating any further big genealogical reports at Orphan George, I am looking forward to excerpting from helpful correspondents over the years as one way of acknowledging their generous assistance. Maybe I’ll throw in some more family photos, too. We’ll see.

Finally, my Thistle/Flinch imprint will explore fresh typographical concepts in six of the new releases – venturing somewhere between broadsides and chapbooks, I expect. This new lineup of free offerings is all poetry.

~*~

What are you looking forward to in the new year?

 

Here’s the latest at THISTLE/FLINCH.

 

MAY WE GROW OLD GRACEFULLY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.

~*~

  1. Somehow as a Subway Hitchhiker (at least in my imagination and dreaming) I’ve settled in a small city in a cluster of small cities amid moose and deer and the occasional black bear. As well as the eagle, overhead. Here, with my city farm, as we garden.
  2. Always the Outsider – even when I’m the Leader.
  3. This slow process of learning to trust each other again.
  4. Yet some Wants are also Needs! (To be loved, accepted – even as a writer – even successful or victorious in some manner.)
  5. My Wall is an aspect of Control. (Even if it’s so classic it’s trite.)
  6. Sometimes it seems we don’t play. We don’t play enough.
  7. The pathway is not straight but strait. Not even like a tightrope. No wonder I’m so often off-kilter.
  8. In the beginning was the Plan and the Plan was (as I paraphrase the gospel of John). Yes, simply was. And all we have to do is step into it! As if it could really be that simple.
  9. This is hardly a Literary Life. How different my work would be had I led another existence. Something with more time for serious reading, teaching, refined social circles. Rather than laboring out in the field.
  10. So comforting, this thick terrycloth bathrobe that reaches to my ankles – not a given, at all, when you’re tall. Nice way to round out the year.

~*~

Set for winter. We burn about three cords of firewood to help heat the house each year.
Set for winter. We burn about three cords of firewood to help heat the house each year. As they used to say, “Half your hay by Groundhog Hog,” meaning the amount you’d need left to get through a full winter. It applied to firewood, too.

SO THIS IS THE GOOD LIFE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

~*~

  1. Is anything more relaxing than sitting in front of a wood fire? Even when it means sitting on the floor?
  2. Gift-buying husbands? Just look! As she says, they’re subjected to indentured shop-itude.
  3. First day of winter and the flannel sheets should be on the bed by now, if not earlier. Flip the mattress and rotate, too.
  4. Our traditional Christmas dinner includes fresh homegrown Brussels sprouts, which means I’m out in the garden harvesting – sometimes in several feet of snow. Likewise with kale and chard: frost improves the flavor.
  5. Let me suggest Mary, as the mother of the church … a slightly different twist on the Nativity story.
  6. For someone who’s lived under relentless deadlines, Christmas itself can be seen as another damn deadline. Or series of deadlines. This year, I think I’m ahead.
  7. Still, I’m deeply grateful for the sense of release – notes, poems, correspondence … the logjam broken … now that the poems and novels are available.
  8. Grandfathers have grandfathers too. In case you’re in one of those inner-child perspectives.
  9. What are the theological dimensions of Alzheimer’s or dimentia? Where are the connections – the response ability – when your story gets so fragmented you’re no longer connected to anything you encounter?
  10. Tell me something true.

~*~

Our own holly, in front of the house.
Our own holly, in front of the house.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE QUOTATIONS BLUR?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When someone speaks of an event while quoting someone else, how accurate is that quotation? How much is a recasting by the teller, perhaps years after the event being related?

In drafting my newest novel, as I turned to a first-person narrative by someone who never even met many of the characters she’s telling about, I realized that her quoting them was actually a filtering through her own voice. In other words, the precision of their voice was in question. Would it be right to put their input in quotations marks? Or eliminate the quotation marks and let the telling float in and out of some recollection?

I’ve opted for the latter. Will it work for the reader, though? We’ll see.