How do you keep someone from becoming a ghost? Write things down. Make the memories more concrete. Life is transient in more ways than we imagine. You take things for granted. You imagine certain people and things as part of your life forever. However we don't realize we are creatures who live with an ever-present … Continue reading Talking to Yourself
Meditations
The Slipperiness of Time
Memories are like ghosts, really. You go about your day just as you always do--- wash the dishes, straighten the couch, make coffee, drive to work. And just when you think everything is normal, you walk through some gossamer thread like a spider's web across your path. Suddenly you're not walking up the stairs to … Continue reading The Slipperiness of Time
The Nature of a Healthy Life
Now is the time of change--- hibernation. The trees shed their clothes and settle down to sleep, and perhaps their roots stir with thoughts and dreams of what's to come. They look forward to that quiet time--- the dormancy above which nature's harshness will blast--- they look forward to that time of rest and storing … Continue reading The Nature of a Healthy Life
Positive Rejection
As my writing work load has slowly been growing, I have been getting more rejection letters, and it is my natural reaction to feel defeated by these rejection letters. I'm sure some of you who come to this blog are writers yourself, and therefore you understand that unique stabbing in your heart when you read, … Continue reading Positive Rejection
Drop That Bar
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 Note
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
Arguing With Myself in Bathrooms
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
Filling the Voids
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
Exotic Milk
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
The Fault Lines of Nostalgia
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
Seeking Prose 