It’s been a bit of a time here sick kids and snow days so many emails to get out from under. So this will be short. There are beautiful things in the world and Camille Dungy is one such beautiful shining writer in the world. Read everything by her. Follow her on all the social…
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I’m working on this manuscript and treading water on my regular responsibilities. It’s up and down with the manuscript—sometimes I love it, sometimes I want to pitch it all out the damn window and learn plumbing. This morning I was thinking about taking three big pieces of paper and making lists: Balls I have in…
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This morning I stumbled from bed at 5 am in search of a book that I must have dreamed about, a collection of essays by V.S. Naipaul called Literary Occasions, which I read more than a decade ago. My conscious mind can’t remember even things I wrote myself, but in my sleep I remember literary criticism and theory…
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I was kind of sick and home most of this weekend, and it was a little spectacular. I read and read and read. I also started watching a really stupid television show that I hate. Only one person knows what it is, and they’d never betray me. I am so ambivalent about the characters that if they all got…
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I have a friend on instagram who posts these lovely, sacred looking photos of her notebook ready to receive writing every morning. I look at them while I’m avoiding my own writing. Yesterday morning I was sitting on my bed with my laptop and stacks and journal and pen and the hood of my sweatshirt…
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Recently a friend said to me, “You were just talking about how writing is what matters most to you and now you have another book coming out! How lucky!” Um. But it’s not luck. But also…it’s not just Hard. Work. either. I mean, of course it’s hard work, it just is automatic in a lot of ways.…
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Last weekend I attended a meeting of the Books That Bind Bookclub, a group of spectacular, thoughtful women who have been meeting monthly for TEN years to discuss books. They are the sort of women who are clearly successful—it’s apparent because none of them needed to talk about their accomplishments or posture. They were steady in themselves…
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In the past year, I’ve noticed a certain insidious indecision creeping across my life (could be all the “who do you think you are?” I’ve faced at work) and I’m trying to unlearn it. I’ve been fuzzy on lots of things and more than a little depressed about the state of the world and I’ve…
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Long weekend season is upon us. Holiday season, not enough time or money and slow email response season. Days are shorter and folks are melancholy. This is the time to be cautious, because the feast days sometimes lead to us forgetting what we need to do in order to feel centered and whole. We think…
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What time is it even? Argh. I hate this. I wrote all Saturday. All day. The writing was awesome. I feel like I got a foothold on the work and didn’t waste too much time tooling around on the Internet. I went to a yoga class with my notebook (frowned upon by some, but fuck that–if…
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