I opened my notebook to find a sticky note to myself: “Free write about the benefits of journaling.” I left it the other day when I read a chapter in the Little, Brown Handbook about journaling and felt a thrum of excitement about what I learned there. Until I read this chapter, I’d felt like … Continue reading The benefits of journaling
I have 35 minutes until my food settles enough that I can go for a run. I want to write. I want to write up one of the ideas on my (very short) list of ideas. The list is only three items long. Any one of the items on it would do. Yet. I can’t … Continue reading Avoidance
I am up early. I could not sleep in. I am on fire to write. The cats yowl and walk on my face at 4:45am these days. They are bored and hungry. Rather than rage at them, I just get up and feed them. When I returned to bed this morning, I planned to go … Continue reading I woke with gerunds on my mind
April was a good month for me for reading. I devoured two publications that experiment with form and structure: the novel Ducks, Newburyport and the online magazine Pipewrench. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Ducks, Newburyport is a 1,000-page sentence. Pipewrench magazine is structured like a dinner party: the main essay is the … Continue reading What makes a work of art resonate?
I joked with friends the other day that after transcribing several years worth of hand-written journals from my younger years, I now recognize it would be no great loss if they were all destroyed in a fire. There’s little of interest in them. They’re not deep, they’re not filled with big ideas or beautiful writing. … Continue reading I like the act of writing
I can’t believe that in more than 35 years of journaling with pen and ink, I never used a fountain pen. For 35 years, I wrote without experiencing the fluid feel of wet ink on quality paper. I did not know the joy of the tactile differences among nibs, barrels, inks, and paper. My husband … Continue reading Pens, paper, and ink
