An acquaintance recently invited me to join a writing group, a very organized group, with agendas and roles. I like the sound of it! New members are asked to share their writing backgrounds. Here is mine.
Photo Prayers
Every week since 2007 (well, most weeks), I write a prayer and pair it with a photograph. I email these Photo Prayers to subscribers and post them on the Internet. Once a month, Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware chooses one to include in its Weekly Word email blast to members. You can see all 687 of them at:
http://photoprayer.com/
Essays On This Website
Occasionally, I will write an essay and post it on my personal website. See, for example:
http://dannyschweers.com/ideas-and-enthusiasm/
Austin Sun
Bits of my writing appear on the Austin Sun website, a reincarnation of the weekly politics and entertainment tabloid I worked on in the mid-1970s. My essay “Wrestling With Donald Trump” remains one of that website’s most viewed articles. It still holds up! See:
https://www.austinsun.us/single-post/2017/02/16/Wrestling-with-Donald-Trump
The Rag
Like many, I started by writing term papers but, while still in graduate school (Philosophy, the University of Texas at Austin, 1970-1973), I started working on The Rag, the weekly underground newspaper. What an education with those hippie anarchists! See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rag
Austin Book of Days Photographic Desk Calendar
For decades, I made a living in the mechanical side of publishing. I had a typesetting business, then a service bureau, then a graphics arts studio. Since moving to Arden, Delaware in 2000, I have designed and hosted websites for a living, although I am now retired. In all that, I and various partners published the Austin Book of Days Photographic Calendar for 13 years. See:
http://www.w2mw.com/bookDays/index.htm
Image: A Journal of Art and Religion
For six months, immediately after moving to Delaware, I served as managing editor of Image: A Journal of Art and Religion. That did not involve writing, though it did give me occasion to talk to George Plimpton and make a call to Mary Oliver. See:
https://imagejournal.org/
Things Left Undone
I hope to get back to work on a book I started in the 1990s, a book called Things Left Undone. And I should publish the best of my Photo Prayers. Those are two current ambitions. Every morning I wake with a new ambition. It is a wonder any one idea becomes incarnate. When that has happened, usually other people have appeared as catalysts.
—Danny Schweers, 2020-12-28