I’ve been hankering road trips lately, before winter really sets in. Something about being on the road, playlists at the ready, lifts me from a certain melancholy that kicks in this time of year. I relish holiday gatherings with family and friends who have become family, but there is no … [Read more...] about Channeling Stephen King: writing and inspiration
Letting Go
The other day I became obsessed with finding two books I could not easily locate. It was a reference to one of them—The Family of Man—in Sally Mann’s wonderful memoir that set me on my mission. The other book, To Be Nobody Else, bears a connection in my mind to The … [Read more...] about Letting Go
What did you read this summer?
Summer reading is a world unto itself. It’s not as if the love of books doesn’t have us immersed in reading all year long. But summer brings with it memories of freedom from school, with all that’s attached to assigned reading, textbook or otherwise. Some things, like the smell of library books, … [Read more...] about What did you read this summer?
Today it’s all about the book
Writers, more often than not, are uncomfortable singing their praises. The work we do, in the quiet of a space we relish, is what sustains us. Lots of time spent being invisible for the sake of the visibility and resonance we hope our stories bring. Maybe Joan Didion was right when she … [Read more...] about Today it’s all about the book
Stories begging to be told
Tell anyone you’re a writer and inevitably you hear these words—Oh do I have a story to tell! If only I knew how to get it all down. Maybe I could tell it to you and you could write it for me. “Writing isn’t particularly different from hibernation,” observes the polar bear/narrator in Yoko … [Read more...] about Stories begging to be told
I live in music
The other day I had a yearning, very specific in its musical nature. I wanted/needed to hear “Dance me to the End of Love,” à la Leonard Cohen when he first recorded it. Maybe not an anthem song in the way “Hallelujah” is, but there must be a reason his last two tours opened with that number. It’s a … [Read more...] about I live in music