I’ve been thinking lately about the writers who shaped me. My writing path has been a long one—starting with essays, moving into novels, and then finding a home for a while in flash: flash fiction, flash memoir, and flash essay. After my two brothers died of AIDS, I began a memoir that eventually evolved into…
Tag: books
Rethinking the Third Age: Life After 70
When I was born in the early 1950s, the average life expectancy in the U.S. was around 68 years. That number has risen steadily over the decades—today it’s about 78 for the general population, with women living on average to 81 and men to nearly 76. The gap between men’s and women’s life spans is…
The Art of Getting Lost on the Page
If you’ve taken one of my personal essay classes, you’ve probably heard me say this more than once: Use your writing to discover something you didn’t know when you started. That’s not just teacher talk. It’s how the best essays—especially the personal kind—find their legs. Here’s the thing. When you sit down with the intention…
Flash Fiction: Two Different Approaches to Living
The light was soft in the room, and the windows were covered by three lines of bookshelves that allowed the sunlight to come in but also diffused it. A long built-in wooden couch with lime green cushions and splashes of orange and yellow pillows ran right below the bookshelves. Jacob lay sprawled on the couch,…
Congratulations to Marie Howe for Her Pulitzer Prize in Poetry!
I love Marie Howe’s poetry. It is accessible, heartfelt, and beautifully expressed. I first saw her when she was a guest on fellow poet Billy Collins’s Masterclass and she read her poem, “What the Living Do,” which expresses her grief over losing her brother John to AIDS in 1889. I lost two brothers, John and…
What Love Looks Like With a Little Help from Viktor Frankl
The best lesson I’ve learned about love is this: the greatest gift I can offer another person is to stop whatever I’m doing, listen — really listen — to what they’re saying, and then make the effort to see the world through their eyes. It sounds simple enough, but it’s not, especially when the other…
Share the Titles of Your Favorite Novels, Please
Having finally finished Hope in a Time of Dying, I’ll be turning my attention back to my Work in Progress from a few years back, which has a working title of Hannah Price. I have written approximately 1/3 of the story, but I want to explore a different kind of structure rather than a straight…
Teasing Out the Tangled
I have discovered that over the years, I have developed patience. I can sit for the required time to unknot a chain on a necklace or go line-by-line through a story, essay, or novel chapter to provide the needed commas, semicolons, dashes, or periods. I can also sort through a drawer and separate the safety…
Tomorrow is Publication Day!
Hi all, I’m happy to say that my book is already on Amazon for pre-order and on Barnes and Noble for sale. It’s $2.99, so please support me in being brave enough to put it out after having it in my desk drawer for fifteen years. (Of course, I did rewrite it another ten times!)…
An Artist’s Date, and Pushing Past My Publication Fear
Today, I listened to several YouTube videos with famous writers on subjects such as voice, character building, scene, plot, and more as I prepare for the weekend writing workshop I’m leading in Dallas beginning next Friday for Story Circle Network. One interview featured Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way) and Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love; Big…
20 Minutes a Day 