When I considered preparing for a book launch talk to be customary, as I had been talking about my debut novel, The Wisdom of the Willow, for some time now, it wasn’t. I had been preparing answers for questions when I realized I had been playing it safe with my writing. Over the past twenty years, I have [...]
One fall morning while treading the parched earth through the woods, I veered from a narrow path to a short bridge hunched over a sleepy river. A pair of mallards commanded a “V” through water like plate glass. Oaks, in states of bright fall undress, hugged the banks. Peace and a soft landscape filled my vision. The sun’s rays [...]
I sunk deeper into my seat when watching her on a short Q and A video. I felt her words were directed at me, as if to say, “and you know who you are.” But I dismissed the thought because I didn’t think my publisher’s recommendation for authors to update their websites every two to three years applied to me. [...]
Lately, I’ve been into writing styles as I plow through my summer reading list. I read closely for the tone, word choice, grammar, and language, the author manipulates to tell a story. I can’t help but to scrutinize what I read, from personal essays, and women’s fiction, to even nonfiction books about trees. My traveling eyes home in on a [...]
I owe you an apology. I haven’t seen you in two months with no attempt to say hello with even a scribble of a few sentences. We haven’t tangled in sorting mixed words or found clarity in excavating unclear meanings or built a solid structure from a wobbly one in a long time. It’s not that I haven’t thought about [...]
Though it may sound counterintuitive, writers have been distracted during this pandemic. But how can we be now that we're no longer engaged in a multi-tasked life previously understood as “normal?” Self-isolation should give us nothing but time to write but we can't seem to get the job done. The absence of what filled my time, a void, became the [...]
It’s a new year, and I was still toting like old baggage writerly guilt from the last weeks of 2019, hindering any New Year resolution-making. But because I followed an underlying assumption—that resolutions will be broken—I never made promises to myself in the past and I wasn’t about to start of this year with making them. Guilt from breaking any [...]
In November, a traditional month for homecoming, I gave thanks. And now in December as the year ends and calls for holiday parties, tree lighting ceremonies, and Hanukkah preparations, some may recount their year in specifics. Maybe you know what I’m talking about—the letter—tucked inside a holiday card you received. You read a script font printed on holiday paper catching [...]
Have you ever liked an author’s second book more than, let’s say, their first? It’s not that an author’s latest book is better; it may be because the writing was different. You may have enjoyed their work of fiction over their first nonfiction book. I’ve always been a writer. I journaled through my anxious teens and in college, I recorded [...]
As a writer, I am asked how I come up with something to write about. The question usually precedes a comment—that it is difficult to write in such a vivid and transparent way as to put oneself in the setting and in a character’s mind. Writing memoir evolved from years of my journal and note-taking to recently publishing a book. [...]