EDITING, WRITING, COACHING, AND THE OCCASIONAL ODD DRAWING
M.L. Lyke
Self-portrait. Monotype.
ABOUT:
M.L. has a jill-of-all-trades journalism career, with roles as writing coach, arts and books editor, war correspondent, national news copy editor, city editor, layout manager, travel writer, environmental reporter, and weekly columnist. Her work has appeared in publications ranging from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to The Washington Post, where she is part of the Talent Network. Her stories have won numerous national awards with judges describing the writing as “fresh,” “insightful,” and “gripping.” One top editor described her as “one of the best wordsmiths in the business.”
M. L. likes working with writers to develop their voice, and to power up and polish their content. “I really appreciated getting my writing kicked up a notch,” commented one reporter. M.L. loves the hours she spends writing poetry and fiction, including creation of a tale about a rogue, mischief-making sea lion named Olo with a taste for steelhead sushi.
From a series on the life a long-lived killer whale called Granny, P-I: The water suddenly humps up, a liquid green mountain. The old one explodes from inside it, five tons of black-and-white muscle parting the sea. https://www.orcanetwork.org/orca-resource-center/whales-tales-granny
From the novel SEADOG: Lit up by the winter moon are glittering piles of herring, some still wriggling in death throes on the wooden planks, their tiny eyes frozen in startled circles. Olo humps among them, gleeful and unrepentant, a Godzilla on a village rampage …
A poem from the anthology I SING THE SALMON Home: Let’s go, my deep-sleep beauty/Let’s run to the river/Dodge the brown cows/That chase us over the bank/Into the pigweed, gold and orange/Lures clinking/Laughing too loud in too-big waders/Squooshy from splats of dung/Steaming in the October chill … (Also to be published in the anthology CASTING LINES.)
From the novel DOOR TO THE RIVER: Little Billy Jo wrapped herself up tight in the fuzzy blanket, naked underneath, thinking about the stinging words: “I wish you’d never been born.” Did her mother wish she didn’t exist? Did she want her to disappear, go whoosh, never be seen again? Could people unborn a baby? She pictured a baby coming out of a woman’s stomach, then going back in. She was pretty sure the tummy was where babies lived ’til they were born. It was probably super dark in there. Maybe wet, too, and smelly. But it might be the safest place in the world for a kid to be.
From an article as an embedded reporter on the USS Abraham Lincoln, P-I: Steam pipes crawl the walls of the chapel, painted an institutional beige. The fighter jets that screech off the deck directly overhead continually rattle the screws loose in the ceiling and deafen conversations about saints and sinners, prophets and pagans. https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/chapel-that-embraces-all-creeds-1109954.php
From an interview with Jim Harrison, P-I: Writer Jim Harrison drinks lavishly from a bottle of 1995 Bandol Domaine Tempier, holding forth on love, death, French wine, fresh truffles, Pablo Neruda, the most extraordinary oyster, a terrine made with 40 quail and 30 doves. He segues to Hollywood friends, the nature of dreams, the beauty of a woman’s butt, a torte of pig nose …
One true sentence …
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. — Ernest Hemingway
Just thinking…
L-l-e-b-r-e-k-n-i-t
The trouble started when I was a little kid wearing my favorite Tinkerbell T-shirt. I looked in the mirror one sunny afternoon and started to cry. The letters were backward. I was backward. I had entered another world and everything was turned around. I was stuck there, forever different, forever weird.
