A paragraph came without warning. I was reading Great House on the way to a wedding in Seattle. I didn’t even have a notebook to write it down, so I ... Read more
A few days ago I was whining to my best friend (also a writer) about how I lack discipline and am not writing consistently. We have this conversation quite often. ... Read more
The end of a school brings a flood of emotion. Woo-hoo! Summer-time–Cooking outside–Sleeping in–Reading whatever I want.I’ve started three lists of all the marvelous ways I’m going to spend my ... Read more
After I’d told yet another story of my struggle to decide just what I should be working on, Carrie (friend; colleague; fellow writer) put it simply: “Everything’s back on the ... Read more
Dear Imagination Tree, Half way into a ten mile run, half way up a doozy of a hill, you shifted my perspective the instant my brain received the sight of ... Read more
Dear Pen and Paper, I bought a manual typewriter from a junk shop downtown Aberdeen and typed my first short story on it. I was eighteen. I didn’t own a ... Read more
You are a writer. Just consider it. There is nothing that can get get you in the mood for sweeping or writing like a good fight. I don’t care what ... Read more
Dear Adulthood, Why did I not hold you off a while longer? I used to skip classes to spend hours penning ideas into notebooks–black coffee, toasted bagel to fuel my ... Read more
By room, I mean that mental space where in spite of distractions that come like insects on warm evenings you triumph in your daily desire to get words on the ... Read more
At risk of sounding like the worst of self-help gurus, I’m going to sound off about the power of play in nurturing (yes, I said nurturing) a consistently productive creative ... Read more