Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
Reading John and Margarett Wrenn's Edgar Lee Masters. Learned today that ELM did not even like the Spoon River Anthology. Throughout his life, he couldn't understand why those poems were so popular and spent much of the rest of his life trying to write ...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
I would like to take a minute here to acknowledge Aubrey, my wife, for all the wonderful things she has done to encourage the writing of my book. Long before I was ever interested in writing memoir or creative nonfiction, she was encouraging me down this...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
Aaron Hatfield was a well-known man in the Sandridge area in the mid-19th Century. He was a wealthy farmer who sat on thousands of acres of land. He lived in a glorious mansion that was a sight for all the locals to behold. He had a strong reputation as a...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
Working evermore through revisions on my personal essays. This is the hardest part of my process. Research is fun, writing is tough, and revision is hell. It's hard to take the things you've written, the things for which your mind has already assigned ...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
You came to me, Masters, in a dreamlike a fire in the night,or warm rain on a landscape covered in ice,with a veil on your face, and I asked youto remove it, which you did.And I was breathstruck at your face.I recognized it at once,and I had so many quest...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
There's no beating around the bush that Oakford is a town smack dab in the middle of farm country. As you approach from any direction, you can see the tall, cold grain elevators looming tall over the heart of town. These gray, faceless golems are a remi...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
I've never been great at journaling. Generally, when I sit down to write, I need to feel like I'm writing for a purpose. Noodling around in a notebook has never been my strong suit. I do think, however, that it would be good for me to keep a journal of...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
I had some time early Saturday morning to work on revisions for the book. It was a nice, quiet morning. Bleak enough outside that I didn't find my eyes gazing out at the chirping birds or the sunshine. I was able to sit here at my big oak desk and comb...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
A while back I wrote a poem about lying in the backyard of my Grandpa's bar (the building in the right rear of the picture) and making necklaces out of old beer pulltabs, and my wife just laughed and laughed, thinking this was the funniest thing. This st...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
I learned today that coffee, for me, is not a good thing. I've always been a coffee drinker. I love coffee. Unfortunately, I learned today that coffee could be contributing to a pre-diabetic or even diabetic condition that I may already have a genetic ...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
As posted previously, Edgar Lee Masters once brought Theodore Dreiser to Oakford to have dinner with John Armstrong, a long-time Oakford citizen. John Armstrong was the son of Jack Armstrong, the notorious wrestler of New Salem, who was once, apparently*...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
Guide to Literary Agents - What is a Platform: "You don't have to just write nonfiction; you have to sell nonfiction, too. And the most effective way of doing that is to be well known and respected by the types/groups of people who will buy the specific...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
When writing memoir or creative nonfiction, it is always difficult to navigate the relationships of those around you. When depicting friends, enemies, family members, or associates you must be careful in the words you choose and in the descriptions you o...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 7 months ago.
I found this picture recently. Yes, that's a six-pack of Busch beer I'm lugging. I'll post more on this later.
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 8 months ago.
Hey everyone. This week has been kind of rough. As I posted previously, I spent last week in Richmond, Virginia, my home away from home. It was a wonderful trip, but the whole week away really threw me for a loop. I didn't have much time there to do w...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 8 months ago.
On Marketing: Book Signing Material: "What can you bring to the table to attract attention to your event"This is a post from Sarah Keeney, the Savas Beatie marketing person, talking about ways to attract attention to your book signings before, during, an...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 8 months ago.
In 1939, Edgar Lee Masters published an essay in Esquire magazine that recalled a visit that his friend and fellow writer, Theodore Dreiser, made to my hometown of Oakford. The story, which took place in 1916, describes a night that Theodore Dreiser spen...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 8 months ago.
Here's the opening of a story I started about my time working at the Petersburg Dairy Queen when I was sixteen years old. This was my first job ever, and I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Originally I thought this story would be include...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 8 months ago.
I'll always think of the Oakford restaurant as the Chuckwagon. When I was a kid, Grandpa used to take me there for breakfast on Saturday mornings. He'd always order biscuits and gravy, and I'd order a stack of pancakes with a side of bacon. When we fin...
Posted by An Embarrassment of Riches 8 months ago.
Hey everyone. Sorry for the absence. I spent last week in Richmond, Virginia for work meetings and a reading conference. It was a beautiful week in Richmond, and it gave me a wonderful opportunity to refresh my mind and get some things into perspective...
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Springfield's public access station.
See Springfield before and afterwards. Rollover snapshots of what used to be Springfield.
Springfield's local newspaper.
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