Proof of Seriousness?
For years I wrote while holding down some sort of job that had nothing to do with writing. The jobs were not glamorous. House cleaning, bartending, carpentry, costumer, clerk in a grocery store,...
View ArticleHolding Space for Yourself
In teaching, one of the things I try to do is hold space. In my private prompts classes, we close our eyes and take some deep breaths and get quiet, letting the workweek fall away, the effort that went...
View ArticleThe Trouble With Words
Words are clumsy. They will tie your tongue. They will embarrass you in front of the cute girl in school. Words will tie your shoelaces together. Words are the mean boys in gym class who pants you....
View ArticleMake ’em Care
I watched Lonesome Dove this weekend, half on Saturday and half on Sunday. I needed something epic and grand and filled with great scenery, strong emotions, and memorable characters. I needed something...
View ArticleTake Heart, Creators
I imagine that we all have a lot spinning in our hearts right now. It’s an election year here in the United States, and a contentious one and the energy is painful and distracting and punishing....
View ArticleFiguring it Out
Besides writing novels, I also weave tapestries on a small lap loom and am learning to play the harp. I feel fortunate to have several different creative endeavors and I try to do a little of each...
View ArticleWriters and Editors
Editors work with energy. Writers also work with energy. But the energy is different. For a writer it’s deeper, it’s more personal, it’s intimate. This is not to say that what editors do is...
View ArticleWild Jesus
This morning I felt something break inside my chest. It was not a bone or an artery or my heart, but it was physical. It felt like a thin glossy sheet of bitter candy, the last vestiges of something...
View ArticleThe Path
I am often asked how I got to where I am now. I honestly don’t know how to answer this question. I didn’t take a conventional route. I didn’t go to college. I didn’t enter an MFA program. I’m not...
View ArticleThe Woo At Work
Writing a novel is messy. It’s a willful entrance into the unknown. It’s uncomfortable and weird and it feels wrong a lot of the time, especially in the beginning. And then one day you notice a...
View ArticleOn Writing and Balance
This is from a talk I gave at the Franklin County Arts Council Writers’ Guild Spring Retreat on balancing a creative life with a work life. The problem is never time. It’s urgency. How much urgency do...
View ArticleTimidity and Standing Fierce
As a child I was timid. I learned early on that my opinions did not matter. If they were heard at all, they were argued with or denied. I did not excel in school. I kept to myself mostly. I roamed the...
View ArticleDefining Self
Because I had difficulty absorbing the information given in school, and because I failed tests, I believed that I was stupid. Because I believed that I was stupid, I believed that I was inferior....
View ArticleBosoms
What I remember: Mother’s Day in Alabama. I am three. A blue dress in a box with tissue. The dress has bosoms, like my mother. My father picked it out for her, but it’s from all of us: the two boys,...
View ArticleWounded
It is hard not to lead with our wounds. We all have them. Some are personal. Some are from childhood. Many are cultural. Every day we step out into the world and the wounds are bumped and beaten and...
View ArticleTaking it Off
Sometimes. Sometimes I want to take it all off, give it all back. The skin, the hair, the eyes, the fingernails. I want to return it. The bones, the liver, the lungs, the vagina, the clitoris. Has it...
View ArticleResisting the Bullshit
When they say upgrade, go outside and chop some wood. When they say new and improved, tell them you like the old ways better. When they say get fit and fabulous, tell them you’re misfit and fabulous....
View ArticleChasing Poetry
Every day the poems slip away, as indifferent as cats. They slink behind trees and clouds. The burble beneath the swamp. I glimpse them floating downstream as I am walking up. But they are not just in...
View ArticleObsession
My life, my mood, my days, my sleep – everything goes better when I have an obsession. Not the unhealthy kind. Not the does-he-love-me-why-doesn’t-he-call kind of obsession. Not the...
View ArticleDear Sir
Dear Sir, I love you, and now you are gone, and I didn’t tell you I love you before you disappeared. That’s because when you were here, I did not love you. In fact, you were always annoying to me, but...
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