I’m late putting up a New Year’s post, owing to the fact I had a book due, I was hospitalized, and there were all those holidays. Being in the hospital for three days (and three mostly sleepless nights) gave me plenty of time to think about the coming year and change. A new year usually
It starts in late October when I pick up special-issue Christmas magazines. Something fires in my brain. Visions of cut-out sugar cookies, homemade breads for neighbors, our house turned into a picture-perfect vintage winter wonderland . . . For Type-A control-freaks like me, Christmas represents the pinnacle of overachievement. Pull out garland, lights, and mistletoe!
Last week I wrote about being “between selves,” referencing an essay by writing teacher, Heather Sellers. I’m still mining that essay, “The Wizard in the Closet,” which is about how Sellers’ FSU writing mentor, Jerome Stern, shaped her into a writer (and a person). As Stern’s grad assistant, Sellers often ran errands for him: “picking
Recently I attended our regional SCBWI conference. It was a great conference, as always, and like old home week. Lots of people came up to me: Hollins students, retreat attendees, critique clients, workshop attendees, even someone who heard me speak at a romance writers panel in 1982 (“You were a girl!”). I was pleased that
As you grow older, you realize there are a great many things you can’t get back: your childhood home, your size two body, your mother’s moonstone pendant you lost in the front yard and never found no matter how many times you raked through the grass. In this era of ever-facing forward, you may think
When I think about the stars and how far away they are and how many, I get so I have to sit down. And then I remember that matter cannot be created or destroyed, which means nothing ever leaves. Not dogs or fleas or mockingbirds or Jefferson’s eyelashes. The dust stirred by the hem of
No tuna for the cats this week. These are the first of the season and Social Security only stretches so far. Time for homemade strawberry shortcake with real cream. Fifty years ago you kissed Estee Lauder Swiss Strawberry off my lips. When all the kids had measles, you picked tiny wild berries and put them
Something was wrong. Sick of being buttoned-up, jammed-up, grown-up, I tore out in the Little Red Truck, down a wide-open highway, windows down, eating a Twix bar, CD player blaring Waylon and Willie in “Good-hearted Woman.” It wasn’t too long before I met the girl who used to drive barefoot down tree-dappled backroads, sipping the
Last fall, social media buzzed with Elizabeth Gilbert’s talk on creativity. Gilbert, who has led workshops on finding your passion, presented the flipside at Oprah’s event. While she herself has followed her passion all her life, she understands that not everyone is cut out of the same cloth. She divided people into jackhammers—those who doggedly
At the writing retreat in Luray a few weekends ago, participants wanted to know where I got the variety of ephemera I use in writing-related art projects. “My Paper Man,” I said. Since I’ve been collecting–well, anything, I’ve had a source. Bottle Man, Postcard Man, Teddy Bear Woman, Depression Glass Man. Right now the “man”
Yesterday I discovered a new British writer whose work (what I’ve read of it) makes me gasp. Yesterday, our first real spring day with daffodils blooming and birds carrying twigs, we went to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, the second most visited cemetery in the nation ( after Arlington). I’ve always loved cemeteries, especially ones with
Last week I read this wonderful book, My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop. I lapped up every syllable about 82 independent bookstores, envious that I don’t have a bookstore where everybody knows your name, where books are recommended, where your own books are promoted. The first bookstore I ever