Michael Jackman, Writer

It seems with the update to WordPress 3.0, the theme I’ve been tweaking carefully the last couple of years has expired. So I’ve thrown this one in for now. I hope you like it.
I also have new sunglasses, which I is a new look too.
Pages are going blank when I edit, so it may be [...]

This post is “postdated”. End of June found me in Iowa City, attending the Iowa Summer Writing Festival for a quick weekend workshop in Creative Non Fiction. Had a good class with a good teacher, and considered myself lucky to be in a workshop with mature, helpful people - In fact, we’re still e-mailing each other [...]

I just realized I’ve been working on my novel for about three years. This isn’t as dedicated as it sounds. I write in fits. But I just started it over again, and when I see what utter crap the concept started as, I’m amazed I’m still working on it. This time, though, it’s actually working. [...]

Had a nice rejection from the Crab Creek Review the other day – a good close call. The note reads:
Dear Micheal,
Thank you so much for sending us your work. Your poems were in my “Seriously Contemplating” folder. I hope you will send to us again.
All best,
These things keep me going, and I don’t [...]

One of the things I find pretty cool about being on a faculty is access to tech. Right now I’m evaluating a Sony e-reader, touchscreen edition Sony sent me, and I just installed Word 2010, thanks to IU Southeast making it available already. The dept. even bought me some nifty mind mapping software and a [...]

The last couple of months have been like going to the disco when I was a twenty-nothing: working up the nerve to ask women to dance, earning a good share of rejections for every hustle. The only difference is I like writing so much more than I ever liked the relentless music, line dances,  shiny [...]

I thought I’d share with you some of my writing implements. People who know me well know I have this thing for fountain pens. I started buying some decent but relatively cheap ones. Then my wife bought me a retro brown Pelican fine fountain pen for our anniversary, helped by my serious pen collector friend [...]

You know how sometimes you worry the writing just won’t come any more? It’s every writer’s greatest fear, only seconded by having the writing flow, but suck. I was very worried about being blocked after I turned in grades and collapsed exhausted for about a week. Finally, my brain lock loosened up and I started [...]

Woke up, not with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, but with the first two sentences of the novel. Good writing session this morning. Well, okay really – filled a couple of pages of a scene where Mindy (formerly Melinda) meets Jack. Probably have to throw out the first two sentences. But it [...]

“You can’t run away from [adversity]. You do what you have to do, no matter what it takes, as long as it’s honest.” – David Loeb Kahn (David Loeb ben Natan v’ Frieda Leah)

In honor of David Loeb Kahn, my wife’s beloved grandfather, I’m reposting here three pieces I wrote about his life for his [...]