Tom Swift Writer’s Notebook

Good idea, Judith Shulevitz. I want at least one day a week of the “sweetness and the slowness” of which you speak.
But what does that mean? What should that mean? I don’t want rules because if I make rules, I’ll break rules, and when I break rules I feel guilt, which causes the very sort [...]

Yellow. Blue. Pink. Sky layered and light. Soft breeze — just enough to make a pot of flowers slowly dance. Two kids in the park across the street squeeze in the day’s last laughs. Final call for bird chirps. A small animal — was that a gopher? — scurries from tree to bush. My eyes [...]

From “Once More to the Lake”:
“Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottagers with their innocent and tranquil design, their tiny [...]

The free market does many things well, but we know it does not do everything. Even market fundamentalists concede that the public must build roads, put out fires, police streets, and provide national defense. Most people, at least those to the left of the Tea Party edge of political spectrum, accept that the government must [...]

Leon Wieseletier writes in the current issue of The New Republic:
“There are transformative events, but not many; and the frequent insistence upon unprecedentedness of one’s own time is evidence only of excitability. There is no need of breaking news for the purposes of arriving at one’s fundamental beliefs. The study of history should suffice. It [...]

They didn’t even tell him. Nope. There was no congratulatory phone call. No letter. No e-mail. Paul Harding happened to be at the Pulitzer Prize web site when he learned he had won the dang thing.
“I came as close to actually fainting as I think I ever have, because I literally just could not believe [...]

Novelists, thanks to John Gardner, often talk about The Dream. That is, a gifted storyteller induces a trance in which words on paper project a world as vivid as the one that occupies the mind during deep sleep. The Dream is what allows literature to provide meaningful experience. Even if the story tells of an [...]

You don’t usually read the obituaries. Instead, you quickly accordion your way to the weather, or to some other page that does not evoke the inevitable. You do not want to be reminded that someday someone else will brush over the bare bones of your life as he checks to see whether he should carry [...]

I have some big news.
What? You finally learned how to use your cell phone or something?
Bigger.
You don’t mean to tell me you broke down and ate a piece of chocolate cake?
I’m serious here.
OK, what did you do — mess up Justin Bieber’s hair? Go see “Sex and the City”? Join a book-burning club?
I quit Facebook.
Look, [...]

Yesterday afternoon I stopped by a showing of four Twin Cities artists. One of them, Jim Kuether, is a talented water colorist, paleo-artist, and photographer. His paintings of area waterscapes drew me in but I looked longest at one of his photographs. It depicts three African-American boys in Mississippi and part of the image’s appeal [...]

I wrote a column for the Northfield News about one of my favorite subjects. For a slightly longer version (one that does not adhere to the newspaper’s tight word limit), follow the jump.

I had the rare and wonderful honor last night to discuss “Chief Bender’s Burden” with a book club. They held the meeting in perhaps the nicest house I have ever seen, on Lake Minnetonka, and the members were as welcoming as the scenery was gorgeous. And what questions! Readers always ask such great questions — [...]

Charley Walters — former Major Leaguer and all-star at the St. Paul Pioneer Press — was kind enough to make note of “Chief Bender’s Burden” in his Sunday column. Keep reading well past commentary on Joe Mauer’s employment status.

As we walked and talked, and the Beast walked and sniffed, the leaves were hard to ignore. Are there more brilliant colors on earth than the yellows and reds of fall? After spending most of last winter in shirtsleeves, I have been bracing for the change of seasons as I brace when I receive my [...]

We walked around, saw the falls, and poked about the park. I had been on my feet most of the day after a short night of sleep and had misjudged how much farther we had to reach the designated area where dogs are allowed to run unencumbered by a leash. Once there we still had [...]

One of the first things we did after settling back was to become a member-owner of Just Food. I can’t afford to buy all of my groceries there, but my mood lightens when I walk through the door. I like that, unlike at a big-box grocer, I can walk around the place in inside of [...]

As I pulled into the post office annex I noticed something I normally wouldn’t: a guy whacking weeds.
Usually, when I’m in the car I flip on the mind’s auto responder. The garbage truck. The jogger. The billboard. I pass them without much thought on the way to the gym, the library, the post office. But [...]

Thunder, which announced this storm an hour before it arrived, rolls on in the unlit afternoon. Rain runs over the roof and pat, pat, patters in front of my window. Dave Brubeck is in the air. The Beast, just back from a jaunt amongst the pecan trees and a chance meeting with his best buddy, [...]

The ritual was almost nightly. After my stories were filed I would go to the all-night Jack in the Box and by the time I had finished dirty bombing my gut with Sourdough Jacks and extra fries the late-night editors would have put the newspaper to bed. I’d return to the then empty newsroom, flip [...]

My heartened heart says to gush. But there are so many emotions it’s too early to sort them into anything useful. My fired-up mind says to carp. But if I start in on the pundit poppycock I might never stop. Lesser lobes say to disrespect. But if the candidates (or the candidates’ supporters) are so [...]