My Own Worst Enemy

…is sitting right here, her hands on my keyboard. She thinks she’s helping me write my novel. But what she’s really doing is spewing out the longest so-called outline in the history of the world, saying it’s the only way she knows how to write this novel, though she knows it’s completely unnecessary and she’s [...]

Internal Dialogue

Admit the following things to yourself, self.
You are not sure if your skill meets up with your vision. The story is better in your head. The pictures in your head, so much better. When you try, and you cannot say that you haven’t been trying, the words that dribble out just don’t have that sparkle. [...]

Crossing the Line

I am often in danger of crossing the line with my fiction, I know this. It’s not that I write shocking things, or play with form or genre too much. It’s that my fiction isn’t always all fiction. Sometimes it’s semi-real. I often have to change identifying characteristics. I don’t know why I’m inspired by [...]

Wanted: Intern/Personal Assistant for Harried Struggling Writer Who Is Too Tired to Handle the Everyday Tasks of Everyday Life

Intern/personal assistant desperately needed to help struggling artist get through day. Tasks include laundry, dishes, shredding thousands of pages of old manuscripts, finding books lost in piles in bedroom because there are no bookshelves, perhaps building and installing bookshelves, dyeing hair, packing lunch for workday at meaningless job that sucks life out of employer, giving [...]

In Which the Universe Revolves Around Me

I was telling a coworker today that I think I am being tested.
She leaned in, eyes wide, By who? she said.
I waved my hands to indicate everything and everyone around us.
She whispered: By the Powers That Be here at [Our Company]?
And I’m like, Oh no, I mean the universe. The universe is testing me, not [...]