Anne-Marie Oomen | On Writing

October 30, 2018 In On Writing

Reading My Own Words: Some Practical Thoughts

Recently my friend Kelli Fitzpatrick, writer of speculative fiction extraordinaire, emailed, paying an unexpected compliment. She’d won a literary prize and had been asked to do a big public reading, and like all of us in those situations, was feeling the nerves. She noted that she always loved the way I read (I always thought she read well!) and would I offer some suggestions for...

February 8, 2018 In On Writing

AMO on Writing: Thoughts on later Stage Revision

Later Stage Revision? For some folks: bleh. For me, a continuously surprising set of interactions with a draft. It’s alive. Later stage revision is marked by confidence, terror, skills, commitment, uncertainty, practice, inspiration, boredom, feedback, deadlines, the state of the draft, sleep and coffee. Among other things. Sound familiar? I can only share my own experience; yours will be a different drama, but we writers...

June 23, 2017 In On Writing, Uncategorized

Lordy I Love That Word

Let me proclaim it: I love the Lordy word. Not I love the Good Lord, an entirely different thing; I’ll discuss that shortly. Why do I love the word Lordy? First, it’s one of those exclamations I caught myself saying for the first time in a long time because, though I’d almost forgotten it, it was suddenly everywhere. I’d lost it in my willingness to...

December 6, 2016 In On Writing

Exploding Moments

Exploding Moments—it looks like shattered glass but it’s not. I was on Aquinas College campus to speak for the Contemporary Writers Series Twentieth Anniversary. In addition, I had only one hour with forty students at Aquinas College for a mini lesson. That old challenge. One hour. Since teaching graduate school I no longer think in one hour segments, only in two-to- four hour teaching segments....

January 19, 2016 In On Writing

Diary of a New Play, Day 3

Dawn in Chicago. Warmer today. Snowing, but a little warmer—not that I’m going outside. I open the script. I stare at the page. I take some notes. I tinker with the preliminary information but I’m really thinking about the guy who will play the expert. Last night, Beth told me about him. Tucker. I looked him up. Creds. Just makes me more scared. I stare...

January 16, 2016 In On Writing

Diary of a Play, Day 2

Diary of a play, Day 2, still taking notes, asking myself and my artistic consultant ridiculous questions. How do I make art of an out-of-control metaphor. ...

January 16, 2016 In On Writing

Diary of a New Play, Day 1

A Diary of a New Play: writer and playwright Anne-Marie Oomen's experience of struggling with revision of a play that she wants to succeed but that she is afraid of. ...

December 21, 2015 In On Writing

Inside the Dark: A Solstice post

I suspect I live mostly in Apollonian light, so I need to feel the dark, not for its violence, but for mystery, the emptiness before imagination....

August 10, 2015 In On Writing

On Mardi Link’s Drummond Girls: A Personal Review

Little has been written, from inside or outside, about groups of women friends. It’s an observation that has cropped up repeatedly in the reviews of Mardi Link’s rich memoir, Drummond Girls, a memoir that describes a twenty-year friendship among eight women, the self-named Drummond Girls who make pilgrimage once a year to Drummond Island, a remote island off the east coast of Michigan’s...

March 8, 2015 In On Writing

Stalking the Writer’s Life: Celebrating “Readings”

Now I suspect good readings combine the receptivity of the listener with the intention of the writer—that match up. A particular voice at a particular time. So maybe the question is: for which readings has my receptivity met a writer’s intentions in a transformative moment? ...