Book

It’s a tortoise. It’s slow. It’s in process. And this is the page where any progress on the book will be posted.

(Would it be at all relevant to say that I am working right now on publishing a book of my students’ work? The book is a collection of essays and poetry and letters on the American Dream and through the process I’m learning a lot about formatting a book and publishing at Create Space. I’m going to go ahead and think of this book on student work as a steppingstone—and keep moving.)

The photo is of an Aldabra giant tortoise. Very giant. The male weighs up to 550 pounds. Most of them live on islands in the Indian Ocean. They are described as “characteristically slow and cautious,” but “capable of appreciable speed.”

I continue to hope that this metaphor will bode well for my book—and that my book might soon discover its capacity for appreciable speed.

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Photo from Wikipedia, where you can also learn more about the Aldabra giant tortoise

Why an ebook of One Year of Writing and Healing?

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 2, 2023 in Blog, Book, Writing Ideas

I am delighted to announce that One Year of Writing and Healing is now an ebook! I’ve completed a project which I’ve been intending to complete for a while: an ebook of the book I self-published back in 2016: One Year of Writing and Healing. It’s revised a bit—I couldn’t resist—but it is not fundamentally different from the 2016 book and thus I am not labeling it as a new edition. One way to think about the book is as a kind of extended workshop on writing and healing with the support of research and the good company of poets, along with—of course—a plethora of writing prompts. One could spend a year going through it—or a month—or one could dip in and out of it over a period of years at your leisure. Order the book...

The Armful by Robert Frost

Posted by Diane Morrow on August 5, 2012 in Blog, Book, Healing Poetry

This poem by Frost can be about a lot of things, I suppose. For me, this week, it seems to be about revision–and how hard it can be to hold coherent images and ideas and how sometimes you just have to put them down and rearrange them–again. Madness, perhaps–but also it seems now a necessary madness. I went back to earlier chapters of One Year of Writing and Healing to pick up some threads to carry forward–and realized that deep revision is again necessary. Chapter 2 as it stands now is just wrong–and changing that begins to change everything. Madness. For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at once. Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best. To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load. I’m heading back to teaching tomorrow. Launching a new semester. I’ll be returning to the work of these chapters and this site (which also needs some serious tinkering) when I can. Sitting down in the middle of it all and trying to stack the pieces in a useful way. Thank you again to everyone who has offered support and help along the way. It has been a joy to have emails pop into my box as surprises and encouragement as I work away at this. __________________________________ Photo from Quiet Commotion...

November Update: Writing and Healing

Posted by Diane Morrow on November 2, 2011 in Blog, Book

The project I’m featuring in my Healing Corridor is HODI: Soldiers of Peace. This is an inspiring project a woman has begun in Kenya where young men and women are offered healing alternatives to violence. There’s a moving video about young men from different tribes playing soccer rather than destroying each other. Well worth a look. I also did some close reading of the poem, Kindness, a couple weeks ago. It’s a poem I’m trying to keep in the back of mind–and sometimes the forefront–as I go into the month of November. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. Wishing for you kindness in this month....