Strange things happen once I start to edit my manuscript. 1. Excuses slip away. Not enough time? I steal time. From chores, from writing assignments, from my chickens. Even from cocktail hour. Not enough motivation? There’s too much. I can’t focus on anything else. I work on my book all of the time. When I…
A friendly Sunday-morning plug for my friend Suzanne Burns’ poetry chapbook “Vacancy”, now available from Pudding House Press. She’s brilliant, has an uncanny ability to nail the absurd, and does her best writing from midnight to 3 a.m. That’s pretty much all you need to know. The prose-poems in this chapbook are fabulous. Even…
“Jiggle jiggle! Mommy, know why your bee-hind jiggles? Because you’re old!” Chicken Noodle made this declaration two days ago after sneaking up on me in my closet, getting dressed. I couldn’t help it, I laughed like Homer Simpson. Ha HA! Perhaps the sensible reaction would be to tear at my hair in lament. But I…
Simply mentioning my book for the first time in months set off an internal maelstrom capped by complete panic in the grips of which I considered quitting writing and getting a job at the mall. This reaction would be amusing if it weren’t so predictable. Since the first, seamless, innocent draft, the thought of editing…
We recently adopted from my sister’s family the dinner-hour pastime “Sad Mad Glad Rad”. The idea is that each person relates an occasion during their day that elicited each of these four emotions (“Rad” referring to “radical”, which is only sort of an emotion, but adds a wild-card element). SGMR started as a structured way…
I haven’t actually worked on my book in months. I rewrote the proposal last September for a consult with an editor. That’s the closest I’ve come to delving in since those knee-jerk edits right after the bonfire. I’ve needed that time; to digest, to recover. After all, the whole point of setting fire to the…
I wish I could say that my local creative community was always a bastion of support and collaboration. Instead it often seems like the cattiest of cocktail parties, at which everyone is full of compliments until you walk away. I suppose nastiness is everywhere. If we writers were moles, the predators would be hawks and…
During the last of three layovers that Chicken Noodle and I endured on our journey home from Hawaii, I ordered us dinner in an airport brewpub. When the meals arrived, I reached over and snatched a French fry off of Noodle’s plate and stuck it in my mouth. Little did I know this simple act…
Six months ago I sat down and banged out an essay about my grandmother. It came easily in an hour or two, the fluid culmination of thoughts I’d had since her death nine years ago. Horizon Air picked it up and ran it in their January issue. I could not have predicted the response. Total…
In the course of a weekend, Chicken Noodle turned four and Chicken Little turned two. After wiping up the frosting and recycling the wrapping, I realized I have somehow become the elated mother of two gorgeous girls who drink milk from cups, walk on their own and sleep through the night. I simultaneously feel my…
