I attended the annual Printer’s Row Lit Fest in Chicago this past weekend. Since I started writing over 10 years ago, I have been driving the 45 minute trip in June to the city to walk five blocks, on Dearborn, from Congress to Polk. My only driving force to visit the Fest at that time was to check out small [...]
I never thought I would ever pick up a book by Stephen King. I’m a writer of memoir, creative nonfiction. He is a writer of – not sure- but I’ll call it science fiction, mystery, and other far out stuff with aliens and the supernatural. I can’t say I have read any of his books. Not my general interest of [...]
I am a writer. I have a degree in Journalism. I learned a couple of things during my college journalism classes. The first was that I was not going to be a reporter. I did not have a knack, let alone a desire to be a fact seeker and then report on whatever the news was. I’m not good at [...]
So here I have it, 66,000 plus words orchestrated to show my life experiences, baring my soul and sharing my bumpy journey through the years, my memoir. I have witnessed its transformation from 75,000 words in tones of discontent, wonderment, resentment, with some anger and perhaps sadness thrown in there for drama’s sake whittled to an essence of bare minimum, [...]
“Breathe, just breathe, c’mon now, here we go. Breeeaathe.” How many times have I told myself this or others have had to tell me? I’m driving in the car, seatbelt fastened, both hands on the wheel, my mind’s dialogue spins fast, my breath is short and shallow. Whether on my way to the next agenda item, feeling anxious or just [...]
Timmy and I never felt neglected when it came to the availability of food. Mom believed preparing three meals a day to be one of her many housewife duties. Watching Julia Child on television was as regular a practice as going to Mass on Saturday nights. “This is not how it turned out for Julia,” she’d say hunched over the [...]
My memoir, “Under the Birch Tree” has been a work in progress for over ten years but it has been only the last year where I have been intent on completing it. It’s time for me to turn the last page and close it up. I have received critiques from two trusted editors/writers. Their feedback really came to the same [...]
Contemplating the opening words of my manuscript. I want to be descriptive, motivating and alluring, yet not too vague. And that's not meant to be an oxymoron, but rather to entice readers to keep reading, planting seeds of my theme in the hopes they will grow and weave their roots throughout my story. TO A TREE “The time has come [...]
Some here say to just wait a few minutes and the weather could change in an instant. There’s nothing quite like the seasons in Chicago. Some inhabitants surrender to the intolerance, moving elsewhere, shaking their heads. Not me, though. The seasons in Chicago are like yin and yang, or the Cubs and Sox, the Bears and Packers, the Mayor and [...]
In the sleepless of night, my mind loosens and my thoughts chase. Thinking too much . . . anxious feelings . . . unhappy ways . . . keep me from falling deeper into subconscious. And then in the beyond, where my mind hovers, I hear the rhythms of a train cutting through the darkness uniting with its tracks as [...]