Tucked in a corner of a shallow closet for two years now is a metal file box. I’ve always known it to be there, despite it being hidden by a stuffed bag of unwanted items for the Goodwill. Opening the closet door was like cuing a flashback when several rosaries, a wooden cross, a small statue of the Virgin Mary, [...]
I’m in a slump. The Wisdom of the Willow is completed, polished, shiny and bright, awaiting publication; the momentum of writing an outline for my third book has slowed to a crawl; a documents file of half-baked writing projects has been left to bake further; and I can’t think of a thing worth reflecting on for any meaningful monthly blog [...]
The other day I opened a plastic bin filled with my mother’s personal things. When emptying her apartment months ago, I had stuffed into them files and papers and notebooks and photographs and more notepapers from drawers in her desk and nightstand and metal files. I then covered the bins with their tight lids as if to preserve her life, [...]
As the fall mornings evolve and daylight diminishes, I find myself waking in the dark. It feels like just yesterday when the early morning sun lifted quickly over the horizon, rousing me from sleep, and the bedroom would take on a lighted glow. Now, I struggle to see any hint of light through the trees; the room remains dark. I [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Our time is filled with input. We stare at screens of many kinds– desktop computers, laptops, phones, iPads, televisions – being inundated by someone else’s thoughts, a type of pre-programmed programming. We become sedentary in body and in mind where our bodies cease to move through a sensory environment and our minds become [...]
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I recently had an opportunity with the National Association of Memoir Writers (www.namw.org) to talk about my memoir, Under the Birch Tree and other points about writing my book. During this hour-long virtual book club, the topic was transforming autobiography to memoir. However, so many points to make in so little time, so thought [...]
Today we celebrate Father’s Day by connecting with fathers and grandpas in ways that make us feel comforted, secure and with the familiar, like being at home. For me, as a little girl, my desire to seek a connection with my father was as strong as my wish to feel at home with him. Back then, a connection, inherent between [...]
You will take over 200 million steps in your lifetime. Imagine if your feet could narrate a travelogue, report miles and destinations, when they are at rest, and injuries they may have sustained. What would they say? They dance and run, burrow in sand, hold you in mountain pose. Your feet connect you. Your feet track memories, record the spot [...]