Letters from Rona / The writing life / Sort by date

The only interactive exhibit at Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta has no touch screen, flashing lights or sound effects. It sits atop a humble wooden desk, as chunky as my grandmother's lace-up oxfords and as solid as her corseted bosom. Its button-size keys demand a firm touch, and its ribbon could use a change. On a manual typewriter like this one, Atlanta's most celebrated daughter composed the 1000-plus pages of Gone With the Wind. When I stopped by one recent Friday morning, the machine had captivated two teenage girls who were pondering the mysteries of this thing called a carriage. A sign on the wall explained how to push it. [more]

When I first ventured onto Twitter at the urging of more cyber-savvy friends, I thought I'd died and gone to that accursed nether region of hell that is politely known as high school. Then I found some good reasons to stick around. [more]

Less than two hours from now I will be lying on an instrument of exquisite torture with my quivering legs upraised in a crude approximation of straightness, my arms beating like the wings of a mangled bird and my lower abs screaming for mercy. At the very thought of this posture I can feel the sweat between my thighs (which strain for tightness but never achieve it) and a wicked cramp in my right foot (which is supposed to point but instead flops about like a flag of surrender). I sometimes doubt if I'll ever get the hang of Pilates. But so help me, I persist. [more]

Back when lunching with writers was part of my job, I booked a date with a humorist beloved across the land for her ability to crack people up. I was expecting to feast on wit. As it happened, I've met cabbies with more one-liners and accountants with less gravitas. [more]

Among the many rewards of this website is the sweet obligation of an annual top 10 list where every slot goes to me. So here they are, my friends---the posts I wouldn't want you to miss because they're the closest to my heart. [more]

What is it with blog posts on blogging? Every time I write one, my blogger friends want to comment, stirring up on online word fest that recalls the distant days when every poet worth his quill wrote poems about poetry and sprinkled his work with allusions to other people's verses on the mysteries of their craft. My recent post "Blogging as spiritual practice" inspired some pretty searching questions about why and what I here. I'd never thought about that before. What a worthy challenge for a blogger! [more]

I've never had a mantra or a healing crystal. I bombed at meditation. When someone rhapsodizes about The Secret, I can't keep the disdain off my face. You might think I ought to show some respect for spiritual practices. In fact I do have one. It's called blogging. [more]

Dayle must have been 15 when she opened her mother's copy of Ladies' Home Journal and found a short story called "Paper Flowers." The illustration featured two barefoot, guitar-toting girls---one who looks bold enough to hop a freight, the other more demure, as if she's only toying with rebellion. I wrote the story, which Dayle has remembered with affection for more than 40 years. [more]

There ought to be an award for a reader so tenacious, she'll spend six weeks tracking down a copy of a book. Not a signed first edition of The Great Gatsby (dust jacket intact, every page pristine) but My Mother's Daughter by one Rona Maynard, available online in paperback for $15.19. Now, you might think online bookstores exist to sell books to people who want to buy them and have gone so far as to type their credit card number in the handy little box. O ye of too much faith! [more]

I am now the perplexed, strung-out owner of a spiffy new desktop computer. It has a monitor so big and bright, I can see my reflection while writing this (better book that hair appointment pronto). Its operating system has the subtlety and cunning to hide essential files in mysterious virtual crannies. Its keyboard boasts more symbols and buttons than the control panel of a jet. [more]

I don't know anyone in Novi Sad, most likely will never go there and had to Google the place to find out that it's in Serbia. So I can't help but wonder how it happened that on May 14 some stranger in Novi Sad set out for an online stroll and ended up on this website. We're not talking just a peek in my virtual doorway. The mystery guest actually read these pages for 11 minutes and 47 seconds---a not-inconsiderable sojourn in Blogland. [more]

I'm packing my bag, clearing out the fridge and wondering which essential item I'll forget on my long-awaited trip to China (please, not my glasses). Any minute now, I'll turn off the computer. Used to be, these steps were enough to get me out the door. Now there's one more: stock my website with lively reading. [more]