“Self-conscious” means to have undue awareness of one’s self, one’s appearance, or one’s actions. I remember the day self-consciousness replaced self-confidence. In 4th grade I was a rough and tumble woods girl, living in the upper peninsula of Michigan. That April we moved to Florida, land of ...
The New York Times Book Review interviewed Wendell Berry for their By the Book feature. The entire thing is great but the last quote grasped the breath in my lungs and held it clutched in time: Q: What you plan to read next? A: I am 81 years old. By now, I know better than to make plans. Like ...
My new WIP (Work in Progress) features characters that sprang to life after I saw a travel ad in the Sunday New York Times. They told me their old world names and I wrote their story in a flurry of energy. It’s one of my favorite stories that I’ve written but the questions started ...
Two years ago I started work on a novel that I thought would be easy to write. I’d dreamed the entire plot and cast of characters. It seemed the only work would be in getting it onto the page. In reality, it revealed my deficits in understanding plot structure. So, I spent time ...
“Be kind. Every one is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” (quote source, a matter of debate) If I could use the analogy of a coin for the 365 days that just passed, I’d say 2014 and 2015 are exactly opposite sides of that coin. The situations on the list would run off ...
