 Red Room Writer Profile
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Carolyn Burns Bass's Blog
October 30, 2009
- A wise possum once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." (Pogo, by Walt Kelly, 1970)What do doors have to do with enemies? Do they protect? They can be locked, they can be propped open, they can swing back and forth with no recoil. Are they barriers? Often. From what? Ourselves.I'm talking again about the metaphorical door. In this case, the gateway or barrier to your ...
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October 19, 2009
- If you’re on the outside of the door, does that make you an outsider? I’ve learned through the years that most people feel like an outsider at some time in his or her life. It begins early, this feeling of alienation. It’s rare that a person can point to a single incident that closed the door to a place of desire or belonging. Some people block—whether practiced or ...
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October 16, 2009
- Facebook may be passé in ten years (maybe less), but for now it's a virtual pub for the global village. While contemplating my recent fixation on doors, I posted a question in my Facebook status and received this lively exchange: Carolyn Burns BassNow that I have a door on my studio, do I dare close it?Tue at 10:39am Catherine DiCairanoAnd lock it!Tue at 10:51am Ej KnappBetter not, ...
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October 15, 2009
- I’ve observed a fly trapped inside the open-slat mini-blinds of my window now for hours. It flies up and down, walks across, buzzes crazily, flies forward and smacks into a blind, returns to the window pane. How like us, trapped between two worlds, not perceiving the doors open to us. The world outside the glass, the world on the other side of the door. We see out the glass to another world, ...
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May 27, 2009
- I just spent two wonderful days at the Betsy Hotel in South Beach. The Betsy sits on Ocean Drive across from Lummus Park in the Art Deco district. Recently renovated from the ground up, the Betsy is a historic property listed in the Florida’s State Registry of Historic Places. The pure white colonial facade of the Betsy shimmers among the crowd of art deco designs along Ocean Drive. ...
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May 11, 2009
- My novel, THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER, yes, the one I'm still revising, draws much from my childhood. My father really was a sword swallower and my mother was a closet chanteuse who played piano and sang with a voice that rivaled the divas of her day. In fact, when I hear Susan Boyle, I think of my mother. She had that kind of voice, but zero confidence.The photo below is my mother playing and ...
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April 13, 2009
- I was silenced too long by the sound of my ownheartbeat.Joy in living and grief in the passing of love.I always knew I would write stories,but I dweltin the glow of a thirty-year literary pregnancy.Labor came on without warning.The stories I stored through a thirty year gestationnow speak through the silence, that heartbeatof fear, of failure, of success.I wish sometimes for the old stillness,but ...
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March 3, 2009
- Several years ago I wrote and self-published a guidebook to help ordinary people write their lifestories. I used this guidebook, WRITE FROM THE HEART, in the classes I taught in memoir writing through our city adult education program. For the last month I've used my morning writing time to revise that guidebook and am publishing it once again.WRITE FROM THE HEART is not a book on how to write a ...
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February 24, 2009
- It’s Fat Tuesday. A day of worldwide gluttony and pursuit of pleasure before Ash Wednesday and the season of lent. Growing up in a very diverse neighborhood in SoCal, many of my friends at school were of Mexican heritage, which also meant Catholic. They went to catechism. They came to school every year on Ash Wednesday with a smudge on their forehead, a secret symbol for an exclusive club. ...
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December 27, 2008
- There is never a good time for disaster. Put a disaster during the holidays and it seems worse for some reason. Maybe I'll rattle on about the philosophical, cultural, or emotional reasons for why disaster during the holidays is so awful, but for now, I just want to share a need with you.One of my author friends, Linnea Heinrichs, lost her home to a fire last Sunday. She and her husband purchased ...
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November 24, 2008
- For your Thanksgiving enjoyment, I'm posting here a section of my novel THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHER that has been cut from the final version. Here you'll meet my 9-year-old protagonist Sheila as she learns how to cook a turkey from her wizened old Grandma. This Grandma is so much like my own, I could name her Elsie.~ Grandma Preps Matilda for the Thanksgiving Feast ~ Before my parents ...
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November 19, 2008
- I spent a lovely afternoon at Callaway Winery a few weeks ago when researching last Sunday's feature in the Press-Enterprise about Temecula. The gift shop was decorated with gorgeous theme displays--all featuring wine and wine-style products. After browsing through the gift shop, my husband and I stepped into the tasting room for a glorious "Wine and Truffle" tasting.I've been a wine ...
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August 16, 2008
- New York is a city of wonders. As many times as I've visited, I never seem to see enough. I've just attended the annual Backspace Writer's Conference, where I spoke in a non-fiction writing panel called, "Real Places, Real Faces, Real Stories."I stayed at the Radisson Martinique Hotel on 32nd and Broadway, in an area called Korea Town and not far from Times Square. My daughter, E, came ...
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August 10, 2008
- Two days in New York can really change a person. Especially if you’re a writer attending the Backspace Writer’s Conference.The Backspace Conference is for serious writers. I don’t mean writers who write only serious material, but writers who are serious about writing. Serious about getting published. Serious about a career writing and publishing. Serious about finding and keeping readers. ...
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August 3, 2008
- You can tell I've been writing quite a few travel features lately. Here's a note I sent to a friend inviting her for a visit (Yes, Jessica, I meant it.)Casa Bass is located in a countrified SoCal township only an hour's drive from the beach, the mountains, the desert, Hollywood, and only 30 minutes from Disneyland.Guests at Casa Bass enjoy views of Mt. Baldy over the housetops across the street, ...
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