Reading The History of Love…loving it!

“I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I keep my manuscript in a box int he oven. I took it out, set it on the kitchen table, and rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter. For a long time I sat looking at the blank page. With two fingers I picked out a title: LAUGHING AND CRYING. I studied it for a few minutes. It wasn’t right. I added another word. LAUGHING & CRYING & WRITING. Then another: LAUGHING & CRYING & WRITING & WAITING. I crumpled it into a ball and dropped it on the floor. I put the water on to boil. Outside the rain had stopped. A pigeon cooed on the windowsill. It puffed up its body, marched back and forth, and took flight. Free as a bird, so to speak. I fed another page into the machine and typed: WORDS FOR EVERYTHING.” From The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.

One comment

  1. Nora Webb says:

    I just finished “The History of Love” and just may start it all over again, that is how much I liked it!

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