Jane Hammons's Blog
RSS
Aug.06.2009
conquistador penitente cowboy
coyote cattle rattlesnake horse
adobe trailer pickup truck
Apache Pueblo Navajo Zuni
cactus cotton chile corn tumbleweed mesquite
ditch canyon arroyo mesa
dirt heat sandstone blood
New Mexico
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Jul.24.2009
6 words, 25 words, 600 words, 130 characters: it all appeals to me.
I'm trying to finish the first draft of a novel. In order to focus on it, I haven't taken on any freelance projects; I'm trying not to start new short stories except to write down what the voices I hear are saying. But it is hard...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Jul.02.2009
You've probably heard about this, but in case you haven't: NPR is holding a flash fiction contest. James Wood will read his favorite entries throughout the summer, and some will be published on the NPR web site.
Continue Reading »
2 comments
May.23.2009
For the past 15 years Memorial Day has been about my brother. Johnny didn't serve in the military. In fact, he was a draft dodger. He never registered for the draft and was a beneficiary of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 pardon. Other members of my family have served and still do serve in the...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
May.12.2009
I just finished reading an interesting post by Jackie Kessler on Deadline Dames. She and her coauthor Caitlin Kittredge were asked to write a short story set in the Black and White universe of their novels. The story could be no longer than 1,500 words. She describes the problem of switching from...
Continue Reading »
May.10.2009
I've been thinking about twitter since Mary Wilkinson's comment on yesterday's blog. I didn't quite get it at first, either. And I even felt a little embarrassed about tweeting (everyone does, or at least pretends to: watch Anderson Cooper and other TV media folk scratch their heads and say "...
Continue Reading »
6 comments
May.09.2009
I just recently joined twitter mainly to see what it was like. Since most of my students are 18-22 in age, I try to keep up with the technology they use; I'd read a couple of short articles on ways to have fun with twitter in the classroom. One of my sisters tweets. I was curious. So I signed up...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
May.01.2009
It's no secret that teachers are always learning from their students. I learn all kinds of things from mine. One of the classes I teach at Cal is a first-year comp course for students who have not fulfilled what the UC system refers to as the entry level writing requirement, which students make...
Continue Reading »
Apr.17.2009
The old saltbox house on North Kentucky Street in Roswell, New Mexico, was often filled with women who seemed impossibly old to a little girl who spent the hours after kindergarten with her great-grandmother, called Mama. Mrs. Simer next door raised parakeets and her house was filled with bright...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Apr.12.2009
Neither my mother nor my father graduated from high school, but they were both big readers, as were my grandparents. We had novels, religious pamphlets, comic books and tons of children's books available to us as children. The book that first transported me to its world was A Girl of the Limberlost...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Apr.11.2009
I'm one of those people who have never learned to stop saying never. As in I'll never write on an electric typewriter, on a computer, by hand again. I'll never join Facebook. I'll never twitter. All are things I have done and some of them I continue to do.
Lately I haven't been able to write on my...
Continue Reading »
Feb.09.2009
I've been reading a little about the Stephen King/Stephenie Meyer kerfluffle-actually, maybe it's just a King kerfluffle. I don't know how or if Meyer responded to his statement in a USA Weekend interview that " . . . Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn...
Continue Reading »
Feb.01.2009
Have no fear. This isn't about 6-pack abs or tight buns. It's not about shaking up solitary and sedentary writing habits (though lord knows solitary and sedentary describe my writing life). It's just a little musing on the connection I've discovered between movement and writing.
For the past few...
Continue Reading »
1 comment
Jan.15.2009
For about a year, I was the senior editor for a lit mag called Mom Writer's Literary Magazine. They published something of mine and then invited me to edit the creative nonfiction. It was a good experience, but it took too much of my time because I had a hard time rejecting pieces without...
Continue Reading »
2 comments
Jan.09.2009
I took one fiction workshop when I was an undergraduate. It was taught by a man who imagined himself to be Ernest Hemingway. He was a blustery, macho man who had published a book of short stories when he was 20 and no fiction since, though he did write articles for Esquire. He had a reputation...
Continue Reading »
About Jane
I grew up in Roswell, New Mexico-more accurately on a farm about 10 miles south of town. My mother was a true believer in the Roswell Incident, so I spent a lot of my childhood chasing after bright lights and taking pictures of things in the night sky that my...
Connections
Jane’s Favorite Books
The Dubliners; The Beggar Maid; Coming Through Slaughter; Glass, Irony and God; Moving On; The Monkeywrench Gang; One Hundred Years of Solitude; A Flag for...