Diane Callahan

reading a new book as soon as I bought it has me feeling like I can do just about anything

Thank you so much!! 💕

I'm also really proud of this handout I designed that summarizes the lessons and writing exercises—and it's free for teachers to use in the classroom!

drive.google.com/file/d/1xxQ2...

How to Find Your Narrative Voice YouTube video by Diane Callahan - Quotidian Writer

Narrative voice is emotion coming through on the page—it’s passion, it’s opinion, it’s personality. Here, I provide five tips for honing your unique voice, along with two writing exercises to put your skills into practice.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifSm...

Thank you so much!! 💖

A photograph of Diane wearing a blue floral dress, standing behind a circular brick opening in a garden. She is holding a copy of her book The Ship and the Storm. A speech bubble at the top reads, "Thank you to all who have helped me on my writing journey, especially to those who have believed in me even though I’ve spent a decade procrastinating on my novels." Smaller text inside the brick circle reads, "Here I am procrastinating on my novel by publishing a poetry collection."

A screenshot of a list of award winners. The name "Diane Callahan, Columbus" is highlighted with four purple sparkles underneath it. A speech bubble to the right reads, "Many, many thanks to Ohio Arts Council for this high honor of receiving the Individual Excellence Award!"

Many, many thanks to OAC and our state legislators whose support changes lives and ensures the sustainability of the arts in Ohio.

A close-up photo of Diane's spiral-bound notebook filled with messy, handwritten notes, diagrams, and arrows. A speech bubble in the upper left corner reads, "But I struggled to focus, to have discipline. My ideas and projects were constantly changing." At the bottom right, a caption with a grimacing emoji reads, "Also, my notes always look like this."

A photo of Diane's MacBook Air sitting on a bed at night. The screen shows a Microsoft Word document titled "The Vital Lie" with a dedication that reads "To all the living and the dead." Below that is an Ernest Becker quote from The Denial of Death. A speech bubble at the bottom of the image reads, "I have been slowly, steadily working on the novel I believe (hope! know!) will be my debut."

A black and white photograph of Diane sitting on a wooden bench, looking down at an open book titled The Ship and the Storm. A speech bubble above her reads, "It’s about a doomed romance, the weight of seeing death all around us, and our own self-destructive tendencies as a species." To the right, tilted text reads, "All my favorite topics: Love! Death! Destruction!"

These funds will allow me to continue my growth through workshops and support creative collaborators in pairing my writing with visual art.

A black and white photograph of Diane, a smiling woman with curly hair, sitting on a rock in front of evergreen trees. Large white handwritten text in the upper left corner reads "thank you!" To the left of Diane, vertical white text reads "Individual Excellence Award for Fiction Writing." In the lower right corner, the Ohio Arts Council logo is displayed in white.

A high-angle photo of a tortoiseshell cat lying on its back on a couch next to Diane's open laptop. A speech bubble reads, "I’ve always wanted to call myself a writer. My mom nurtured that in me as a kid, keeping all the nonsense stories I’d make." A small caption on the laptop's palm rest says, "Sassy and Gatsby are my favorite writing buddies (sorry, everyone else)."

I’m deeply honored to receive the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for my fiction! I can’t express how much this means to me.

As I watch footage of explosions in Beirut and dust clouds towering above apartment blocks in Tehran, I keep coming back to something that I witnessed back in the summer of '04, during my first tour in Iraq. But first, let's start with a question:

Have you ever heard someone wail?

1/

Thanks for being a supporter of whimsy! ✨

I had way too much fun playing 20 Questions: Cryptid Edition with author @jarodkanderson.bsky.social!

Jarod K. Anderson’s fantastical new novel STRANGE ANIMALS is out now, featuring mysterious cryptids from his imagination. Already one of my fave reads of the year!

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

a simple draft check for a poem is retyping it, if you hate it then it needs work, and if you like it but don’t discover any possibilities in retyping then it also needs work

I wanna make myself clear:

-Fuck ICE
-Fuck Trump

That is all, good day

a writer's voice is what they do despite being warned against it

coincidentally this is also what it's like to live with lactose sensitivity

just shoveled out 10 neighbors and if you’re seeing the news in Minneapolis and feeling helpless I can’t overstate how emotionally helpful it is to just do something small for the people around you right now

MLK was only 39 when he was killed. Growing up, I thought that was old. But I’m 43 now and I’m stunned by the burden he shouldered at such a young age. I’m also a lot more aware of how hard it is, at any age, to carry the hopes and dreams of an oppressed people on your shoulders, as so many do.

i think this MLK day the thing to focus on is the strategic focus and tactical brilliance of the civil rights movement and the way it was laser focused on a set of achievable goals

What a beautiful idea—a fantasy and science fiction special collections library for research, founded by author Andre Norton. I'm reading my first Norton novel ("The Year of the Unicorn") and about her influence on the genre as a whole.

www.andre-norton.com/contents/hig...

I had a cookie and chips ‘n’ salsa for breakfast. Pretty good start to the day, I’d say.

Library search bar with the text "I'm looking for...true grit."

Libraries really do have everything...

a man wearing a blue sweater is sitting in front of a window . Alt: Robert Downey Jr. looking exasperated and running his hand down his entire face to his chin

I wrote a perfectly concise fifteen-minute video script on narrative voice and then FOR SOME REASON felt compelled to add a five-minute aside about voice vs. style vs. tone (I promise this will get trimmed for viewers' sake).

The book That Time of Year by Marie NDiaye stands upright on a white windowsill. Behind it, a glass window is covered in raindrops, blurring the view of trees and a gray sky outside. The book cover is dark red with a branch-like pattern, creating a moody, autumnal atmosphere that matches the rainy weather.

"But Herman couldn't help but think that he too was a lost soul now, and lost souls never leave the place they choose or end up in."

A close-up of page 11 from the book. The text reads: "...trying to force a casual gait in spite of his trembling legs, his dripping face. 'They’re going to wonder why I don’t have an umbrella,' he told himself uneasily. He walked three times around the deserted village square, hands in his pockets, and his shoulders were suddenly racked by outright convulsions. He hurried down the main street, heading for the gendarmerie. However certain he was that he wouldn’t see Rose inside, he couldn’t help glancing into every shop he passed by, and he sensed that the owners, idle at this late hour, were also watching him as he passed, their expressions inexplicably disapproving. Was it, Herman wondered, because they were surprised to see him still here on the first of September, in the rain, in soaked shirt sleeves, finding that suspicious in itself? Maybe the people around here didn’t like outsiders experiencing autumn, which was in a sense none of those outsiders’ business, maybe they thought the intrusion into their mysterious post-summer life indiscreet? For a moment..."

NDiaye depicts the uncanniness of learning new cultural rules as an outsider. The protagonist is told he shouldn’t lock his door because it makes it seem like he has something to hide. What's obvious to the in-group is alien to others, the nuances of which are almost impossible to teach or learn.

The characters feel intentionally distant, and the book is composed of a series of strange vignettes, with hypnotic, wandering sentences. It ends abruptly, like waking from a dream. The indifference of bureaucracy toward truth and justice is a horror all its own.

A tortoiseshell cat lies across an open book, its fuzzy paw resting directly on the first page of Chapter 1. The text on the page begins with "Night had fallen by the time the teacher made up his mind to go out in search of news."

It reminded me of the movie “Midsommar” without the violence, leaning into the the "stranger in a strange land,” trope where provincial life seems uncanny to the intruding city dweller. The reading experience was akin to watching an atmospheric short film.

A top-down shot of a fluffy black cat with bright yellow eyes lying on a green textured blanket. Next to the cat lies the book That Time of Year. The cat is looking directly up at the camera with a wide-eyed expression.

Imagine a crowd of people staring at you wordlessly as you walk through a small town in the French countryside. You’re looking for your lost spouse and child as the relentless rain pours down…

This is “That Time of Year” by Marie NDiaye, a French surrealist novella translated by Jordan Stump.

Thank you so much for writing it! I deeply identify with that story.

“A Love Story Told in Nine Lives” by Anna Vangala Jones “This is the one in which they meet, fall in love, and get married. They will grow old together.”

Meeting anyone of great significance in our lives feels like a grand fluke. There's a popular quote that goes, "You haven't met everyone who will love you yet."

That idea is the heart of this beautiful, bittersweet story by @anniejowrites.bsky.social.
ashortstorylong.substack.com/p/a-love-sto...

Says Tsai: I think the wave of memory-related books has a lot to do with how we've been gaslit as a nation over how devastating Covid has been and continues to be (plus the global gaslighting over the genocides to which we're daily witnesses). What we experienced and what we remember does not match up with what we're being told. And invalidating a memory is so deeply personal. It's hurtful and provocative to say, 'No, that's not how it went.'

I have so much sadness and rage I don't know what to do with. That has always been the case, but it's becoming more impossible to remain soft, to feel that anything really makes a difference.

I'm thinking about this quote from author Mia Tsai in Charlie Jane Anders's newsletter: