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It’s been snowing here in Portland. Supposedly the biggest snow storm in 40 years. Because of that, most of us have been holed up in our homes. We can take walks here and there, but driving doesn’t work so well. I couldn’t even get my truck away from the curb. So I’ve been holed up in the house, cleaning and looking after my new puppy, Lucy. The exciting news is that Lucy is about half housetrained. Right now she is convinced that if she poops outside, and goes to the side door, she will get a treat. But if she is in the back bedroom, the carpet feels too much like lawn and she goes there. She’s only ten days into training, so I am sure she will figure it out soon enough. The penned up energy of being in the house is being channeled toward finishing the new book. It’s due mid January. I’m enjoying the process, but in the pressure to get the book completed, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be human, to need to work, to want to accomplish and succeed, and what plays in those motives. I was sharing with a couple friends [...]

Came across this today, and was willing to risk belaboring the tribute. Hope you are having a good monday. For discussions sake, I am curious about the worst lines of poetry you’ve read. Or perhaps, written.

    I went to Powell’s to get Malcolm Gladwell’s new book (Powell’s is selling signed editions) and nearly dropped it when I saw Billy Collins had released another selection of poems. I kept the Gladwell book and am looking forward to reading it, but the new Collins book jumped off the shelf and wagged around my feet like a dog. I bought it and went outside and tried to read and walk but nearly ran into a pole so I sat outside a coffee shop and read slowly. It’s hard to read Collins slowly, though. It’s hard to enjoy him when you enjoy him so much. Ten poems in I had ink on my hands and on my chin and I wiped the ink on my sleeves and by the end of it I was holding the book open with my elbows and the top, round pink of my ears were black.   The new book is called Ballistics and I’ll share some of my favorite lines, then give you the title poem. For the rest you’ll have to spring for the hardcover.    from August   I went to grammar school for Jesus and to graduate school for Wallace [...]

Steve Taylor on Blue Like Jazz from Donald Miller on Vimeo. I’ve been getting a number of questions about the movie version of Blue Like Jazz and I thought I’d update everybody. Steve Taylor, Ben Pearson and I have been working on the screenplay for a long time, nearly two years. We had hoped to shoot the movie last summer but because the economy tanked it has taken longer to find the right investors (a studio won’t give us the creative freedom we want) so we are scheduled to shoot the film this June/July. Anyway, recently Steve, Ben and I were able to get together for a few hours to go through the script again and I captured a bit of Steve on video. Screenwriting is different work than essay writing in that the work (at least for our project) was done in community. I found this more enjoyable than sitting alone in a coffee shop or in my office trying to dial in a series of thoughts for paper. In screenwriting, the story is everything. And I was surprised at how much the process changed my approach to writing essays. I’ve applied a great deal of story structure to [...]

Last night we had a pumpkin carving party here at the house. A great time had by all. But the culminating event was definitely the tossing of the pumpkin. I hope it becomes an annual event. My friend Kevin Rogers happened to bring a video camera and caught the action. Thanks Kevin. Pumpkin Toss from Kevin Rogers on Vimeo.