Lower your standards. I mean it. Lower your standards. What’s wrong with being a hard-working, obscure writer? There are a lot of hard-working writers who have amazing bodies of work and hold their heads high every day. What makes you need to be the great American novelist… or nothing else? Here’s the problem with you. … Continue reading Drop That Bar
Here's your lighthearted fluff for the day! As many of you know, I enjoy running (see Runner's High). Many of you may also know that I have a cat. How are these two things related you ask? Are you some sort of cat whisperer, Katie, that you've convinced your feline to run with you? No. … Continue reading Here’s Your Lighthearted Note
I've been thinking about conversations lately. Maybe even arguments, you could say. I've always been the type of person who talking things out with people helps get my creative juices flowing. But have you ever had a heated discussion with someone that either excites you or (maybe) angers you so much you leave said person's … Continue reading Arguing With Myself in Bathrooms
I've been a distracted, undisciplined writer for half my life. Great chunks of years have disappeared into writing hiatus. Imagine it like a vast white space in the middle of a neatly typed page. A huge void. Those voids I have filled with silly things--- not my words, thoughts, or ideas. Not even the stories … Continue reading Filling the Voids
Where do you stand in a world looking only for exotic names, skins, and avatars? Where do you stand when you're just bland milk with a brain and thoughts that do not fit? It seems to me the world wants bland, uniform innards coated by a colorful shell. It doesn't want bland on the outside … Continue reading Exotic Milk
When I was a child, I was fascinated by abandoned things. Houses, roads, plots of land, store fronts— whole towns. It didn’t matter. My imagination exploded whenever I came across the empty, the broken-down or the grown over. To this day, vivid memories— like snapshots— live on in the back shelves of my brain: a … Continue reading The Fault Lines of Nostalgia
I had forgotten how differently paced life is when you must go into the office to work. From the moment you wake up, you feel as if you cannot catch your breath. Is there enough time to get my run in? ... Did I remember to lay out all of my clothes last night?... Meal … Continue reading The Return
January cold has come to roost here in the North. It makes everything so much more complicated. Just to step outside and scatter ice melt on my frozen driveway takes about forty-five minutes of preparation and just as many layers of clothing. My mornings runs become afternoon runs because of a negative wind chill factor, … Continue reading That Perfect Something
Wishes die slowly, fighting with every kick and punch and gasp. But wishes– dreams– are fanciful things made most of midnight talks and music full of empty drums and open spaces. Dreams are born of a lonely heart, twenty-two years too long, and hope like a prune. Loneliness is the twin to dreams. It is … Continue reading Two Sides of a Coin
All of a sudden, the gray skies open and lose their payload. Sheets of rain cascade past my windows and strum amidst the pebbles in my driveway. Their chorus floats back to me faintly through the closed window– a throaty song rather like a wide arena filled with applause. But who is it the rain … Continue reading Applause
Seeking Prose 