Time is an issue for me. It has been an issue for a long while. Not when I was a kid. Then time stretched out like a relaxed cat, stretching long, and I relaxed with it. Playing outside up in trees and pretending each limb was a room in my imaginary house, and me climbing…
Tag: timed writing
My Submission Plan
Today I submitted three of my pieces to literary magazines. I also followed the advice in the article I posted and actually took the time to read several magazines, especially the ones to which I submitted. My plan is to devote one day a week to submissions, something I haven’t done lately. It is time,…
Happy Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s card provided by Southwest Airlines. Ray and I are heading back to LA from Texas. We’re in San Antonio for a quick stop over from Dallas before heading off for 3 hours in the air. The flight attendant is cracking jokes. “If you want Pepsi go to an airline that has filed Chapter 11. …
Gas heater When I was a little girl, I spent many a night curled up on the hearth in front of a gas heater, listening to the hiss of the gas and staring at the orange and blue flames. Often I could hear my dad’s snoring in his nearby bed, the rhythmic cadence that told…
Prompt: Marcia Ball and the Texas Blues
We saw Marcia Ball and her band the other night here in Texas at a local club called Loose Wheels. They are a long-term Austin band and they play a combination of Texas blues and Louisiana rock. You could imagine yourself sitting in a New Orleans bar listening to her pound away on her piano…
Underestimating LA Rush Hour or Why Not to Go 50 Miles for an Award
Today I went with one of my students and her mother to the awards ceremony for the California Division of the Scholastic Artists and Writers contest, the oldest and more prestigious contest for youth in the United States. The time of the event was 4:30 in a city 50 miles east of LA. Rush hour….
Good night
Tonight I have to go to bed and go to sleep. My eyes will barely stay open long enough for me to write these words. I have had a killing schedule over the past 2 days. Something about my UCLA daughter counting on me to help her with her term papers plus me needing to…
Flash Fiction Prompt: Hands
Sheila was surprised when the phone didn’t ring. She’d waited all day; waited into early evening. She was certain he’d call, but he didn’t. Not even after he said he would; not even after she said it was okay. She checked to make sure the battery on her phone was charged. She even went to…
Attention Older Readers: I Need Your Advice
Okay, so it’s happened: I looked up and realized my kids have grown up. Yes, okay, so Sarah IS 29, Liz 26 and Rachael 20, but you don’t understand, I’ve been a Mother with a capital M for the past almost 30 years. And Ray has been a Father with the same focused interest. Alas,…
Flash Essay Prompt: Leonard Cohen, Brother George, and Recovery
As Leonard Cohen writes in his song, Anthem: Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There’s a crack – a crack – in everything That’s how the light gets in. I just read a fellow blogger’s heartfelt account of the bumps on her road to recovery from alcohol abuse. She spoke…
20 Minutes a Day 