Where I Am When Summer Ends

I am about to have a cavity drilled. I am behind in my deadlines. I am settled, pretty much, in my new job. I am on the verge of writing something real. I am reading two magazines and four books, which has meant just carrying one of each around with me since I don’t have [...]

Traveling Ideas

I keep getting these ideas when I’m traveling. I don’t have to be traveling far. They come when I’m walking the sidewalk. While crossing the street. On the subway. In an elevator. Climbing flights of stairs. Last week, they were flooding through me while I traveled in a crowded train on tracks running north alongside [...]

My Long-Winded Way

It is apparently impossible for me to escape. I write long. Always, every time, I write too long. For example, I told you I write long twice, when all I had to do was say it once. Why? Why, I can’t help it. I wish I could be pitch-perfect and precise, but I’m a rambler.
My [...]

Sketches from an Identity Crisis in Progress

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It’s not that I don’t know who I am. I do. I am in this body; I walk around in it; this is me. It could be that I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. That I think I should be different, could be different, would have been had I not fallen [...]

On Miranda July, Workshop Slams, and the Novel of My Dreams

I am reading the stories of Miranda July.
Last week I saw her movie. It was an odd film; I liked it so very much.
But back to the stories. They’re absurd. Raucous. Very brief, perfectly brief. They’re odd, and yes, you guessed it, I like them very much.
Elizabeth at Fluent mentioned this: they are not the [...]

Elevator Confessions

I arrived at my weekend writing spot late this afternoon. No makeup. Messy hair, roots in desperate need of getting done. Enormous backpack housing laptop, script pages for current freelance adaptation, book for other freelance adaptation, notebook for notes, magazine for procrastination, big bottle of water.
I will get a lot done tonight, I vowed. I [...]

Flickers of Nonsense

I have been watching terrible TV. Yes, amid complaints of not having enough time to write my own fiction I am taking the time out of my life to sit before the flickering box and watch reality shows about nothing. It’s the people in them that fascinate me. I like people-watching and eavesdropping on strangers, [...]

Life in a Box

Sometimes do you find yourself wondering, Is this my life? I have these moments often. Like now. Sitting here writing on deadline, a project that is meaningless, except that it’s worth more than two months’ rent, sitting here, thirty-four minutes before I have to get on the subway to go to my day job, where [...]

It’s That Time

Yep, it’s that time of year again. The winds of rejection are blowing, last week right at me.
There are the slips, the ones smaller than your hand that fly out of the envelope when torn open. The ones so flimsy they drift, because you let them, deep into the unknowable caverns under the couch. Some [...]

High/Low

I am a study in extremes.
One day I feel good about something I’ve written; the next day I want to tear it up and spit on it and stomp it into an unrecognizable mush and kick it around a little after that, get my aggression out, make myself feel worse than I already do.
There should [...]

Rock Bottom

Maybe you have to hit rock bottom with your writing, with your confidence in your writing—and without any semblance of confidence, there is no writing. Maybe you have to fall. And fall hard. After that maybe you can go on.
By you, clearly I mean me. Maybe I have to go splat.
Yesterday, let’s not talk about [...]

Apples and Squash

My laptop was fixed in a matter of hours. I sent it out Monday night. It arrived in Memphis on Tuesday morning; it got its new top case by lunch; it was sent back for early a.m. delivery before I got back from work. Wednesday morning it was back home. I didn’t pay a cent, [...]