I will be reading from my essay “Passing Through a Green Room”, recently published in High Desert Journal (see Fame vs. Fortune), at the High Desert Journal/tbd advertising downtown Bend Art Walk event tomorrow night, June 5, approx. 6:45 p.m., 856 NW Bond Street Suite 2, Bend. Would love to see some friendly faces! Because…
When I was in my 20s I used to say, “I write when an essay strikes me” or “I have to wait until it’s all there, inside me, ready to come out.” What luxury. Possibility and time were abundant then; pure, delicious creativity the only motivator. If I’d continued waiting for an essay to…
Six years ago Captain Daddy and I came home from the hospital after our baby died to find a tree in the driveway. A group of friends had gone together to buy us this: a six-foot tall crab apple tree sprouting towards the sky, roots tied up with burlap. “We are so sad for…
Nothing like vacation to remind what matters, give perspective, recharge batteries just enough to make you think you should start getting up at 3 a.m. to a) write a book b) play the guitar c) meditate. Not really. I’ve always been a firm believer that 3 a.m. is for sleeping. Chicken Little woke up at…
One of the nicest thing about having kids in your life is that, as a grownup, there just aren’t that many people who say to you, “Oooo, I like your panties.”
Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the May 11 New Yorker is titled “How David Beats Goliath.” The topic is how underdogs win by breaking the rules and supplanting ability with effort. “We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity,” he writes. “It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability…
I noticed the other day that the job that I quit nine years ago in order to start freelancing is available. I was hit with this unexpected twinge. Would they hire me back, if I applied? That I would even consider this is directly related to my current state of disillusionment with freelancing. This…
Today at Blooming Eventually our subject is Ray Bradbury’s Writing Theory. Write three million words, he proclaims, and you automatically achieve mastery of the craft. What does that look like? Let’s see if we can take a stab at how many words I have written. Where to begin: Does school writing count? Let’s say that…
For me, one of the most personally significant impacts of the current economic situation is the return of Chester. Chester was a happy caribou living in the northern reaches of Alaska until the mighty hunter Captain Daddy shot him dead seven years ago. Now he is merely a shadow of his former self—or, more specifically,…
“No one is going to publish a first novel by a 45-year-old.” This little curse was spoken recently by one of the members of my writing group. Today it reverberates around my skull. So many of my cohorts seem to lately feel our age like an ankle shackle, while still recognizing that in the grand…