Ink Tea Stone Leaf

A place to get the words out

writing

  • The State of the Novel

    A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was striving to finish my most recent revision of The Ghost of Canard University by January First. I am pleased to announce that, in spite of my heinous executive dysfunction, I have indeed finished this revision—as of last Friday, January Sixteenth, 2026. That very evening, the revised… Continue reading

  • Maybe Next Week

    I’ve got a lot to think about. I’ve got a lot to do. There is no saving the world in feeling bad, or in writing about why the world needs saving or why you feel bad. There’s no exorcising those bad feelings with something you dashed off in a few minutes, or a spasm of… Continue reading

  • Let’s Make A List

    I’d like to have a blog post up on Saturday morning, but it’s Friday evening and I’m simply not prepared for that. Mentally, I am just not there; my hamster wheels are slowing to a standstill, the hamsters themselves having reached their limits of exercise. You can see it in my metaphors, I’m simply out… Continue reading

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  • Are you too tired to write?

    What do you write when your head is foggy, and your hands are tired? You can write about what is bothering you—how foggy your head is, how tired your hands are. You can write about the poor state of the world, if your head is just clear enough to give you an idea of what… Continue reading

  • I’m only going to write a little post this week

    You see, a lot of things are running around in my mind. I’ve got to finish this revision of my novel, which is hard enough to do without an attention-starved parrot trying to hide inside my desk when he thinks I’m not looking. I’ve let myself let that slide too many times because I decided… Continue reading

  • What I want to accomplish when I write poetry

    Every once in a while I hit the verse button and post some text with a higher than average percentage of enter key presses. I call these poems, because they resemble poems, although I honestly don’t know what it means to “resemble” a poem. Poetry is a wonderful art form because of the freedom it… Continue reading

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  • The state of the novel

    I’m taking a short break from editing The Ghost of Canard University today in order to talk about how things are going with that book. Sometimes you’ve got to do that, or you go insane from staring at your own words for too long, wondering how you could have put them together so amateurishly. Is… Continue reading

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  • Hope Is of The Future

    Hope is of the future, not the past,because the world that was cannot be savedand wounds that were cannot be uninflicted.Hope requires time to grow, freshlygathered from the mornings yet to comewith careful hands and patient dedication.Hope thrives in an undiscovered land,writes itself in prophecy and dreamsitself to life with sudden inspiration. Continue reading

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  • Hunkering down for the garage sale

    I don’t have much energy to write for the blog this weekend. As the title of this post indicates, I am currently conducting a garage sale (also known as a yard sale, a rummage sale, or surely half a dozen other variants and regionalisms) at my house. Ariele and I made signs, and I posted… Continue reading

  • About Sybil Johnson, Thoughts, and Language

    Summer is here, and I am finally applying what powers of focus I have toward finishing my first revision of the first draft of my first novel, The Ghost of Canard University. It has been just about a year since I began working on this story in earnest, and I would certainly be further along… Continue reading

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