Grabbing the Running Line
• Day S E V E N • Harvester Island Writers Workshop Friday, Sept. 9, 2022 Today’s post is a retrospective within a retrospective. Confusing I know. Stay with me. In the chronology of writing camp, we’re at Friday 9-9, the last full day. Tonight we’ll feast on Dungeness crab and the reading of each other’s stories.
Falling in Love with Nouns and Verbs
• Day O N E • Harvester Island Writers Workshop Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022 It’s noon. A spit-polished group of strangers pack tightly into the living room of Leslie Leyland Fields, our host and writing instructor for the Harvester Island Writers’ Workshop. She’s in my Mount Rushmore of writers. I try to stay chill and not to
Learning To Stand in an Unstable World
Evil advancing in real-time. Intimidation, scapegoating, and finger-pointing. Parents, educators, and politicians at odds. Big tech acting as arbiters of speech. Gender, race, rights, and riots fighting for headlines and our head space. This is an extraordinary time to be alive. Tectonic plates are shifting right underneath our feet. So, where we place our feet
The Sky Is Not Falling
Deep breath, everyone. How are we doing? Is perfect love reigning in our hearts? On our shopping lists? In our social media posts? Because this is our time to shine. This is our time to play show-and-tell with peace.
Time to Dust Off Your Dream
Maybe it’s time to dust off your dream. Think it’s too late? Think you’re too old? Past your prime? Here’s a little 411: Julia Child enrolled in cooking school at age 36. Madeleine Albright started her diplomatic career at age 40. Nora Ephron (who started as a mail girl when Newsweek told her they didn’t
How to be a failer, not a failure
I want you to fail. I mean that in the nicest possible way. I’ll explain. I’ve been thinking a lot about bravery. It’s just so untidy. It forces us to grapple with our fear of failure. It makes us go with the tools we’ve got when we’d rather polish them, rearrange them, or, wait until