My dad’s family bible and watch finally arrived in the mail to me nearly twenty years after his death. How it happened is a circuitous story, worthy of a southern novel. Of note, I did in the getting, offer to pay my nephew a sum of money to steal the bible off my sister’s coffee table. It didn’t come to that but hopefully gave my nephew and niece a tale to tell. Novelist Pat Conroy once contended there are no crimes in families beyond forgiveness. Well, that rings true. The presence of these items in … Continue reading Southbound by Sharon Ackerman→
Unlike my previous writing efforts, I am presently engaged in compiling a history of the local garden club (of all things!) The subject is not one I would have chosen and I never thought I would get my knees dirty in this way. It chose me. By way of a short history, the local garden club donated four or five boxes of their records— which begin with the founding in 1935— to the county historical society. As a member of the society, I happened upon these records and wrote four articles on them for our … Continue reading Evolution of a History by Fred Wilbur→
Despite a mountain of unfinished drafts, I am compelled to start another book. While drafting an essay something clicked, a connection was made in my brain, and I want to share those thoughts in a way that will create similar connections for the reader. Maybe this will be the one I actually complete. Excitement drives the ceremonious opening of a new Word doc. After typing a couple hundred words it occurred to me that some of what I had just written would work well for another book I’ve thought about writing. No harm in jotting … Continue reading What AM I Looking For? by Paula Boyland→
I was working with a new client who had come to me because she said she hated her writing life. As I sat with her on Zoom and asked her questions about her writing, I watched her face change as she described how she used to feel about writing when she was much younger, and how she felt about it now. She looked troubled, and sad. And also confused. Why was writing so hard for her now? she asked. She didn’t understand why it felt like pulling teeth to sit down and crank out five … Continue reading When Writing Isn’t Fun Anymore by Lauren Sapala→
Every year, hundreds of new books on productivity are published on Amazon. Out of all these books, a significant slice is dedicated to productivity for writers. Many of the titles promise to teach us how to write faster, how to schedule our time more efficiently, or how to publish our books more rapidly. But no matter what they promise, they all contain a common theme: The way you are working now is not good enough. You are too slow, and if you are too slow as a writer, you will get left behind. I shudder … Continue reading Why Reading Books on Productivity Is the Worst Thing a Writer Could Do by Lauren Sapala→
You’re twenty. Fresh-faced. Everyone else in this writing cohort is watching you, rubbernecking, wide-eyed, pale. They can smell the blood in the water. They know you are going to say something, you must say something. Silence is not an option. The woman who submitted the piece is proud of it. Proud. Admittedly, her prose is clean, precise, purposeful. She has her MFA. She’s earned it. She uses it to write about people whose suffering she could never begin to comprehend. Her little scrap of prose chronicles the murder of a fictional anonymous boy in … Continue reading How To Survive The Buffet by Jessica Mendoza→
Hello Book Lovers! I’m happy to share that my novel, The Book Lovers, will be published in October 2023 by Regal House Publishing, a small, highly congenial press that specializes in literary fiction. Set in Gilded Age Boston, The Book Lovers tells the story of an author of romance and adventure novels who becomes a champion of the working women who are her faithful readers as she takes on the male literary establishment. It’s also a love story—about people and books, and about how revision on the page can mirror revision in life and vice … Continue reading Book News and More . . . by Virginia Pye→
Here are things that I have done to avoid writing: chase my recalcitrant dog around the house for an entire afternoon trying to clip his nails, read all the comments on an article I wasn’t even that interested in, and although the effect would be transient at best, close my laptop to reorganize the kitchen cabinets. Last week, as I was struggling with the same sentence for more time than is either normal or healthy, the doorbell rang. An enthusiastic man introduced himself and his assistant. ‘I promise we’re not here to change your … Continue reading Time Suck by Erika Raskin→
Steps and measurements, bullet points of to-dos with creation in mind. Beautiful guidelines meant only to guide. It is here that I begin, here that I write something of worth, something to heal, where I grow again on this journey of life. I look back at the penciled recipes before me, remembering these can be erased, rewritten, and that there is room to improve. Two cups of this. A dash of that and mix it all together . . . but do I really wanna mix it? What if I don’t have that ingredient? This … Continue reading Recipes by Matthew Berg→
I can’t tell if it’s a naturally recurring feature of my post-mastectomy slog, or just another variation of my chronic struggle to feel relevant. Four weeks out from surgery I stare at my screen and write sentences, only to delete them seconds later. “I decided that if I let a boy get me pregnant, I would kill myself before I’d ever tell my parents. I would have too.” Hyperbole. Delete. “Later I learned that there were problems in the Evangelical Women’s Caucus. By 1987 it had split up into two groups, each better reflecting the … Continue reading Doubts About the Enterprise by Angela J. Latham→
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