Linda K Sienkiewicz

Writing life, line by line

Glow little glow worm: for Mom

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Glimmer, glimmer: When cleaning out the basement, I found my son's Glo Friends collection from the 80s. They were so gosh darn cute. I'm glad I saved them. Best of all, those "crazy aeronautical boll weevils" still "illuminate yon woods primeval!" In other words, they still glow in the dark! Funny how some things stick with you, like songs, scents and old phone numbers. My late mother used … [Read more...]

Why We Write

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“Fiction is supposed to be, forgive me, less shitty than life. Better than life. It is supposed to make more sense than life. That’s one of the reasons we read, one of the reasons we write. We want to feel we are forgiven and that there is hope…. Redemption is and always has been a staple of American fiction.” ~Author Molly Giles, in Odds on Ends, “The Writer’s Chronicle” Noble … [Read more...]

Why Great Stories Need Flaming Chainsaws

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Ever wonder what elements in storytelling make a book catch fire? What makes a book impossible to put down? Flaming Chainsaws I found this gem of an essay on storytelling with an unlikely title,  The Dance of the Flaming Chainsaws, by Benjamin Percy and wanted to pass it along to my readers. Percy wanted to understand how The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is 672 pages long, was … [Read more...]

The question I never answered: Babysitting at fourteen

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The Mystery of the Babysitting Gig Like a good babysitter, I showed up on time, put the kids to bed when I was supposed to, and, as a bonus, washed the dishes before the parents got home. I liked kids. I didn't yell at them or slap them across the face, like one babysitter had done to me years earlier. She'd brought cookies, and I told her they were "crummy," meaning full of crumbs. I … [Read more...]

Devil’s Food Cake and White Lies

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  Those nasty box cakes My mother had an electric mixer with a rotating bowl that blended her cakes into creamy smoothness, and she always let me lick the bowl clean. All that yummy raw batter *shudder* She had nothing but contempt for what she called box cakes: "Mrs. So-and-So made one of those cakes from a box for the party. It tasted terrible." I asked her what terrible tasted … [Read more...]