Posted in Business Writing, Personal Essays on May 16th, 2012
For some of the creative writing classes I teach—thankfully, not all—I’m paid according to the number of students who enroll. Each student pays a very modest amount, so a small class means small remuneration for me. After recently teaching six students at an arts center, I screwed up my courage and told the personable program [...]
Posted in Personal Essays, What Keeps Me From Writing? on Mar 14th, 2012
If my husband learned the world was about to end, or that he only had a short time to live, he’d stuff some chocolate in his mouth. Then he’d assemble all the sweets we have in the house and go out and stock up on some more. Under similar circumstances, though, I’d hasten to get [...]
Posted in Personal Essays on Jan 10th, 2012
My husband and I changed our Internet service provider. Naturally things didn’t go as planned. In fact they’ve been disastrous. Emails to my old address are not being forwarded to the new one, so if you need to reach me, please use the following address: Relief11@verizon.net Thank you.
Posted in Personal Essays on Dec 8th, 2011
I’m mystified by man caves. Frankly, I’m not even sure they exist outside of HGTV’s home buying series. “This would be perfect for my man cave,” the husband always says, leaning back and shaping his hands into a rectangle as he indicates the spot on the wall where he’ll hang the “flat screen.” (The hip [...]
Posted in Memoir Writing, Personal Essays on Dec 6th, 2011
As I’ve written in other posts here, I teach boomers and seniors to write stories from their lives. Our classes are moving, exciting, suspenseful, and a whole lot of fun—because that’s what the stories the students write are. My Legacy is Simply This When new students tell me they have this inexplicable urge to write [...]
Posted in Creative Writing Tips, Personal Essays on Jun 1st, 2011
I Had It All Wrong My early fantasies of the writing life bore no relation to reality, saturated as they were with a determined sentimentality. I must have gotten my ideas from photos I came across in which writers were always pensively portrayed in workspaces that overlooked meadows and streams drenched in dappled sunlight. [...]
Posted in Personal Essays on Feb 25th, 2011
Leave a comment about what interferes with your writing to win a free download of Polish and Publish: The Indispensable Toolkit for Creative Writers. Sitting across from each other in her large, disordered office and wearing almost matching sleeveless dresses, the library director and I ignore the fact that my dress is clinging to my [...]
Posted in Personal Essays on Feb 25th, 2011
Feeble Counter-Measures I have tried all the known methods for minimizing hot flashes. I take deep breaths to calm myself while grasping an icy beverage when a hot flash threatens. I eat tofu, lentils, and garbanzo beans, drizzle flaxseed on my food, and drink one cup of coffee in the morning. I never drink alcohol, since [...]
Posted in Personal Essays on Feb 16th, 2011
Not in my writing projects. Although I have changed the opening of my memoir, My Mother’s Money—or Almost an Heiress—6 times. (I’m still shuffling the pages back and forth between two sections, weighing which one has the stronger hook.) I’m talking about the many times in the past two and a half years that I’ve [...]
Posted in Personal Essays on Feb 1st, 2011
Leave a comment about what interferes with your writing to win a free download of Polish and Publish: The Indispensable Toolkit for Creative Writers. This time last week I was arguing with a salmon. The Whole Foods butcher had boned it nicely, but left some unappealing tan flesh attached to its underside. I was struggling [...]
