An excerpt . . . My emotions voiced their opinion one night. Talk in my head revolved. I cried for the memories of the past and the emotions I would pack with me, masked on my face and wrapped around my heart. Feeling lost and disconnected during the unemployment days was never too far away. I traipsed Michigan Avenue from [...]
Fears can be crippling, even stoppers of your tracks. Others seem to have many different fears - fears of spiders, heights, escalators, swimming. How did we learn to be afraid? Babies and toddlers appear to have no fears. As they become children they take on life experiences which may be good, but then some may be bad, hence a fear [...]
I was struck by how familiar the sight was yet there was something a little wrong about it. It is Spring and with budding of the new season, the conditions for fauna and foliage are just right for their awakenings. Browns are turning with slight green tinges, spring bulbs have popped their showy heads in red and yellows. Nature's landscape [...]
“Oh, didn’t you know my middle name is, ‘Grace?” I’ve often said in jest to diffuse my embarrassment of any immediate physical error – a stumble, a knock over the filled water glass, a trip over the dog. Though I am no gazelle-like, willowy ballerina – a poster person for pure grace – my short, stocky legs and thick, but [...]
an excerpt... I heard the call. It wasn’t a whisper or a delicate voice or loud words urging me to transcribe thoughts to paper where I hoped to see ideas born into stories. The call went off like an alarm, telling me it was time to awaken my spirit. I received my calling when I was fifteen, accompanied by a [...]
. . . an excerpt. . . My middle-aged hands fingered the black and white photos interspersed with yellowing color Polaroids. As I searched for the one of my mother, burrowing deeper inside the box through layers of years, the wavy skin and popping veins from the top of my hands caught my attention. I always thought I had my [...]
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Heading north on Lake Shore Drive, summer sapphire skies complimented the pale green lake with its waves creating a rhythm that blended with the beats of my heart. But when winter winds demanded attention, grey skies clashed with blue-grey water, a tiring violence. Oak Street, Division, North Avenue, Fullerton, Belmont. I named each exit. Addison, Waveland. I used to get [...]
It is evolution as I sit with pen in hand recalling my beginnings in school, learning the alphabet and how each letter sounded separately and then together and then taking a book in my hand and learning to read as I said out loud the words together to make sentences and discovered complete thoughts where now I've taken the beginnings [...]
"There are two basic approaches to creative nonfiction," according to Lee Gutkind, author of You Can't Make this Stuff Up, - memoir/personal essay and immersion nonfiction. I get how immersion is creative nonfiction but the memoir/personal essay part still remains unclear as to how that genre could be under the creative nonfiction umbrella. Gutkind writes that creative nonfiction, referred to [...]