At the risk of boring you with all the reasons I’ve been unable to keep up with this blog and/or reading your blogs, allow me to say: I’ve been busy. I’ve been traveling, and taking steps toward change, and thinking about my writing in new ways — all without actually writing, of course, since that [...]

Last night a tarot card reader wearing a purple turban in a tapas-style restaurant (long story) told me I need to stay focused because I have a lot riding on my current project. Sure, he also incorrectly assumed that I was 1. currently single and 2. a mother, but whatever — when you are two [...]

Here are the final pictures I’ll post from my writing residency. Already this place feels so far away. How can it be that only one week ago I was sleeping in that bedroom, carrying my breakfast around on a tray, and writing for hours before taking a stroll around the lake, biking to the pumpkin [...]

I’m back from my writing residency, which I can only describe as a wonderful and strange week full of so much hard work, good company in the other writers, and warm hospitality from the spa staff and guests. I might not have any other writing residencies to compare it to, but this one has to [...]

I’m still at my writing residency. Yesterday I wrote so much I gave myself a headache. Obviously, things are going very well. But I need to save all my words for the work I’m doing here, so for now, I’ll just share some of my sights from the week:  

By the time you read this I will already be gone, across state lines for a short but much, much, much needed writing residency. During this string of precious days I’ll have all the time and mental space I could ask for to work on new writing projects, revise older ones, and read, read, read. [...]

On Friday I headed west, boarded a ferry, and made my way to a rambling old farmhouse on Kelleys Island. There, I joined for the first time a group of writers who have been meeting annually on the island for years. I was honored for the chance to join them even if, in retrospect, I [...]

1. Once, when I was getting a haircut (at somewhere like Best Cuts or Great Clips, because that’s how I roll if I splurge and actually pay someone to trim my hair), the stylist asked what I did for work. When I told her I was an editor, she said, “Wow, so you must have [...]

Is there a name for the phenomenon where you travel to a new place and keep believing you recognize people you know among all the strangers? Like my semester abroad in London, where for weeks I thought I recognized people in the tube stations, in the museums, in the little Tesco at the end of [...]

Making art is not a luxury or a decoration … The practice of imagination through making art is fundamental to us as human beings. Failure of imagination is at the heart of the worst things we do. What we do here as writers and readers is central to our identity, our nature, and our best [...]