As of today, April 15th, there are only forty days left to May 25th, my due date, or the metric by which all my medical caregivers concur that my daughter will be fully developed and ready to take her first independent breath… give or take a few days. We can only be so precise when it…
Category: Prose
Catch-all category for short stories, etc.
(a sunflower by any other name)
I’m getting married in October, and among the millions of decisions I have to make between now and the hour of my wedding, I also have to make a decision about whether to change my name. ::siiiiiigh:: I’m a self-identifying feminist—and a vitriol-spitting, fire-breathing one of late, given this Hobby Lobby disgrace—and I have never…
Introits
A great while ago, I had the great honor of lecturing about the introit at an undergraduate fiction seminar. As I am presently distracting myself from what I ought to be doing, this is a quick summary of what I spoke about. For those not in the know with one of the technical terms for…
Philanthropist.
I might not get around to it later, so before I get carried off by the whirlwind that’s the end of December, may all the yous out there have a happy and healthy holiday, whatever you celebrate. And Happy 2014! On to business: anyone who’s had an extended conversation with me about fiction writing knows…
BYE 2013: Best Year Ever listings (+ a brief #MoG update)
It’s been a slow process, but I’ve been able to gather the extent of my literary losses following the untimely dispatching of my hard drive in October. It could’ve been way worse, but here was the damage: I lost the first drafts and doodlings of my most recent poems, the redrafting I’d accomplished in August…
Taking Risks
In 2012, I found myself in a situation in which I either had to embrace change and transformation, or return to stagnation and somehow discover contentment in a situation that wasn’t working for me anymore. I definitely didn’t feel ready for change and transformation when they came to me, but I knew that if I…
Kinship: On Joy & Pain, on Agony & Anguish
For Bill, who proposed the idea, and Simba, who asked specifically… I. One of the fundamental perplexities of life is that joy and pain have such an intimate kinship with each other. On the surface, it would seem that their paths operate as strict geometric parallels, stretching out into infinity without ever meeting. Yet there…
There are no rules.
It always perplexes me that many writers feel the need to establish rules for writing. Some of them are useful, like those from Kurt Vonnegut and Neil Gaiman. Others are ridiculous, and you can identify your own personal bugbear from the more ludicrous ones compiled by The Guardian here and here. I find it amazing that purists…
The Bell Jar: A Suicide Note?
Here’s the first in my new blog series I’m calling Visitations, in which I blog about an extended stay with a book that I really should have read by now. I’d also like to offer the caveat that this review/critical analysis is spoiler heavy. George Pollucci’s appearance within The Bell Jar is a flicker within…