ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

MY WRITING

  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing a Short Story

    Throwback Thursdays” at ClimbingSky feature posts I wrote over a 15 year period for various blogs. This was first posted on February 17, 2011. My long-time friend (for almost 40 years now) Mitchell Stocks forwarded this list: “Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Writing Short Stories.” I had never seen the list before. Since I know that Read more

  • On Writing

    For close to 30 years, I have had a habit of writing, editing, and rewriting just about everyday: poetry, journaling, fiction, and blogging. I go through phases where I will send some of it out to contests or for publication. Occasionally I have had someone choose to publish something I have written. These are featured Read more

  • On Re-writing Poems

    Years ago I remember reading that Yeats would constantly re-write and re-work even his most famous published poems. At the time I read that, it sounded like the most insane thing I had ever heard. Why go to all the work to make a poem, to get it right, have it set into type and Read more

  • Processing the Unprocessable

    I think I have mentioned here before that I have learned that I need time to internally process things before I write about them. Is two weeks enough time to try to process what is unprossessable? Two months? Two decades? I remain convinced that the purpose of government is to protect the weak from the Read more

  • How Do I Work?

    To be able to post something everyday here at ClimbingSky, I need to always have postings scheduled a couple of weeks ahead of time. And have a basic plan for 30 days ahead of time. My personal habit of writing daily helps. As well as sticking to things I have a lot of opinions about Read more

  • Tools of the Trade

    As a writer you need the following tools: May I suggest that coffee is the most important of all! Read more

  • All-Star Break: “Poetry” by Marianne Moore

    My recent post of Marianne Moore’s poem, “Baseball and Writing,” got me thinking more about Moore and one of my other great loves, poetry. If you approach Marianne Moore the same way as you approach most poets you will be quickly frustrated. Her poetry is more difficult, confounding, and requires more work than that of Read more

  • To Hold A Sports Page In Your Hand

    Last week someone left a copy of the StarTribune on the lunch table at work. It was still in the plastic bag that papers are delivered in these days. Over lunch, I took the sports page to my desk and read it. Cover to cover. Spending the most time on the page with the box Read more

  • Long Time, No Blog

    Sometime before Covid, after blogging on several different sites for more than 10 years, I wrote what I believed at the time to be my very last blog post. I closed my laptop, let the domain I had go, and started working on other “projects.” Recently though, like a phantom limb, I have been feeling Read more