Sleep. I need eight hours of sleep a night. That’s usually fine—but when Ray and I stumble upon a compelling series, it’s much easier to forgo sleep than to exercise a little discipline and go to bed at 10:30 or 11 instead of 12:30 or 1. I tend to do better with a 10:30–6:30 (or…
Month: January 2026
Yes, I Still Miss George
For my brother George, on his birthday. I wish George were here. He would be appalled by our current political situation and would be a safe person for me to talk to about all the frustration, worry, and disbelief that have characterized both times Trump has been in power. He would agree with my assessment…
Sharp Edges, Softened
This blog post was inspired by a college essay question one of my students was required to answer: Give a brief self-interview that will help us get to know you better. Reading the prompt, I realized it invited deep reflection, so I decided to answer the prompt myself. 1) You have clearly done quite a…
The World Inside My Head
When do I feel most free? Ah, I know. When I write fiction. Nothing matches the sense of freedom I feel when I settle into a comfortable chair with either my laptop or a notebook and pen and write a random sentence or fragment of dialogue with no idea where it will take me. From…
Outrunning Your Inner Critic, Twenty Minutes at a Time
Today is the first day of Story Circle Network’s 20 Minutes a Day Writing Challenge. This is a program that my daughter, Liz Beaty, SCN’s program director, and I, SCN’s educational coordinator, developed a few years ago, and we are proud to bring it back by popular demand. The concept is simple: Writing for 20…
A Wander Through the Rain and My Earlier Life
My feet are cold. I am wearing my trusty rubber boots because we got another big drippy rain today here in Ojai. However, I am now in my office, where there is heat and no rain. Why the cold feet? We all know that lack of good circulation is probably the answer. I have, after…
A Gift from the Past: Patricia’s Buttermilk Pie
Over twenty-five years ago, my old friend, Patricia Butler—God rest her soul—hand-wrote some of her favorite recipes for Ray and me before she died. She had been a production baker at the Old Pecan Street Cafe, one of Austin’s favorite breakfast-and-brunch spots in the 1980s and ’90s, and she was among the bakers who produced…
A New Year, Set to Mahler
Right now on SiriusXM, Symphony Hall, Channel 54, Ray and I are listening to Mahler’s First Symphony, the third movement—the Funeral March, to be specific. This movement was based on a satirical woodcut Mahler had seen, in which a group of forest animals conduct a funeral for a hunter. Mahler uses the familiar French melody…
20 Minutes a Day 