“Get back on the horse,” is something my mother said quite a lot. I fell off quite a few horses… And “things will look different in the morning.” She was right, they generally do. “No good thing ever came from alcohol.” Said with a pointing finger as I recall, and…
“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” –Sue Monk Kidd, Why We Write About Ourselves It takes time to figure out what it is we want or need to say and how to say it. Usually…
Fanny Howe never let children get in the way of writing. When I was at UCSD in the late 90s getting a Literature/Writing degree I had the honor of being mentored by the poet and novelist. I interviewed her once for a magazine and she described her writing process as…
Escape from the murder hornets with me for a moment on this first Monday of May during the sequester and let’s write something fun. Does life feel crazy? Do you have a crazy mother? All good subject matter… Last spring I wrote this: Two men sitting on a bench waiting…
Sunday is a day I rest, relax, rejoice. Then plan my week. What do you want to do in May? In WA our stay at home order has been extended. Perfect. For writers. I’m thinking of all the writing I can continue, all the things I appreciate about home. And…
Was it Virginia Woolf who first said, we think back through our mothers? Is there an umbilical cord that runs through history? How are you connected, or not, through this way of thinking? Does it tie you down… or lend you a life line? Is it a kite on a…
Have you ever written about your birth? About what it might be like if you could access those earliest of memories, floating and then falling down into the birth canal, or being lifted into the light- however it was you came from that world within your birth mother into this…
It still does not fail to amaze me that I have a 12 year-old, but especially this 12 year-old, this child I was sure I didn’t want. At the time I found out I was pregnant I was 46, applying to grad school, literally filling out applications in the physician’s…
So what are we doing for Motherhood Memoir Month during the coronavirus sequester? Writing of course. Not a mother? No worries. Everyone has a motherhood story to tell, because obviously… where did you come from? Was your mother missing in some or many ways? Absence is a strong theme in…
The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hample is “a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude,” and it’s getting many of my allotted reading minutes at the moment. It’s rather perfect for these times of armchair travel and virus inspired daydreaming. Why I like…