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Giant Pencil
I walked the edge of ocean today, hoping the sound and salt of waves might somehow ease the awfulness of this week’s news. I walked, thinking: what to do, how to help, how to move forward. I’m a writer but in this moment, writing felt too puny, too trifling, not nearly enough. I felt like
Magic Portal
Today, as I sat on a beach log, crushed by the horrors happening in Ukraine, outraged by Putin’s brutality, astonished by the courage of Zelensky and the Ukrainians, I watched five kids build this structure. They called it their magic portal and when they were done, they took turns going through it, imagining they’d transformed
Wonderful News!
I’ve sold my second novel, ANGELINE, to the fabulous Blackstone Publishing! So happy and grateful to be working once again with the publishing team that brought THE NIGHT CHILD into the world.
The Phoenix: 14 Stories of Women’s Independence, Survival and Recovery
Well, this was an unexpected honor. Does my heart good to see THE NIGHT CHILD on such a beautiful list of books acknowledging inner strength, courage, and recovery of self. All gratitude to WFWA and Booktrib! I look forward to reading all of these! The Phoenix: 14 Stories of Women’s Independence, Survival and Recovery
The Letter
Recently, a cousin in Ireland sent me a letter I’d written to my grandparents when I was fifteen. She’d found it in an old box of my grandmother’s. To see the letter surface now, almost five decades later, surprised and touched me deeply. Some of my happiest childhood memories are made of moments visiting my
Hope
Hey, I know things are hard right now, but it’s vital we choose hope over fear. Stand shoulder to shoulder with it. Because fear constricts. Makes us tight. Feeds more fear. Divides, disparages, denigrates. Erodes health. Erodes good decision making. Makes us stuck. Closes us down at time when our power is needed more than
Maybe
Maybe you’re hurling curses at the purple crocuses and eating dinner at three o’clock because who can keep track of time anymore and dinner is mostly Doritos and pancakes, and you’re afraid to drink that last carton of milk even though the use by date has come and gone, but you keep checking the date,
Thirteen Things I Learned From Owning A Bookstore
Recently, my husband, Peter and I sold our beloved bookstore, The Writers’ Workshoppe and Imprint Books in Port Townsend to another couple who love books as much as we do. Now that I’ve had time to catch my breath a bit, I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned over the last twelve years
THE TRUTH IS: a post book tour reflection
I step up to the microphone. There’s an audience of maybe thirty people here to listen to me read from, and talk about my first novel, The Night Child. Sometimes there are more, sometimes fewer. Once there were only three people and one was my husband, and the other two were booksellers. I fumble with the
When Your Memoir Wants To Be A Novel
The Night Child, a novel, was born from my memoir—a narrative of my personal history with dissociation, sexual abuse and survival. For more than a decade, with the support of my psychotherapist and trusted writing mentors, I wrote to make sense of what happened, to understand the impact, and if I was lucky, to finally
Trust Me
Strangely, I’ve had a good amount of good news lately. I say strangely because the negative political energy right now is thick as a skull, and it’s hard to imagine anything good squeezing its way in. Anyway, in late December my agent called to say we had an offer for my novel, a good offer.
The Contemplative Warrior
Lately, I’ve been thinking about contemplation and its role in activism. In a period of political urgency, when there’s so much work to be done, how much time can we afford to spend in reflection about what’s working and what’s not? But. Can we afford not to give deep consideration to our emotions and motives?
Human Connection
Last week, after the election, I invited participants in my workshops to write through their strongest emotions during this time. Today, each writer read their responses aloud. Ache and raw despair. Honesty, strength and commitment to love. And the question threading through all: How far would I go to stand up for what I believe?
Through Beauty
Today when I was out walking, a stranger with broken in her eyes, came up to me and thanked me for recommending a book to her—Our Souls at Night, by Kent Haruf. She said it brought her beauty in a hard time. I don’t remember recommending the book to her, but I will remember her
let us soften
Fear, anger and uncertainty are escalating, and lately, I find myself caught between extremes of being scared shitless, profoundly sad, and trying to hold onto enough courage to stay present, listen, and take action. But this I am certain of: Abusers and misogynists and bigots count on our silence. They count on our fear. In
alchemy
Sometimes when I write, form insists itself upon content with such confidence and grace, I can’t help but feel I’m part of a sacred thing.
Mouse Trip
Years ago, I wrote out a list of my strengths with the misguided notion that if I reviewed the list often enough, I could actually rewire my genetic tendency toward perpetual self-doubt. One Saturday, a week after my fiftieth birthday, I’d felt imperfect as hell and pulled out the list. I’d had a
This Is Who We Are
(in response to the mass shooting in Orlando, Sunday morning, June 12th, 2016) This is who we are: WE are thousands lined up to give our blood to the wounded. WE are first responders, grief counselors, doctors, nurses and friends who carried dying friends and lovers out of a bloody nightclub. WE are millions of
american dream
nobody can hear anybody anymore everybody blade sharpening and i am running to saltwater bleeding point of origin receptacle of memory ears lips heart hands arms legs woman wide open and the cutting edge goes hush-hush
poetry workshop
note the syntax and nuance the shady overtones threatening to expose your hiding places take away anything that doesn’t bear critical weight. strike the palms together and feel the beat of letters shaping words, shaping musical notes it’s not only what a word means but what does
trust your writing
trust your writing. even if you don’t want to go there even if you don’t know where the beginning is or the middle or the end even if it’s hard because there will be days when it’s fucking hard that thing you want to censor? don’t that’s where your art
As If
Recently, someone asked me why I read fiction. The way he asked it. As if reading fiction was a frivolous thing, even puerile. As if fiction didn’t corroborate, vindicate, heal, illuminate, question, relieve, clarify, shift and rip apart. As if fiction didn’t insist we climb into the membrane of another and examine thoughts, feelings,
the upside
i want to take a moment before it turns into next year and note all the beautiful things that happened this year, because if i don’t note the good things, i can get a little fraught and fraught sometimes makes me stuck, so hence the need to remember the good things. here we go.
thank you
I’ve been a hot dog vendor, a shoe salesperson, a middle-school teacher, and a catholic school principal, but owning a bookstore has given me moments with the most eclectic tribe of humans of all. There’s the crime scene cleaner who talked to me about the delicate line between detachment and sensitivity while I rang up
dear sweet writer who recently dipped your pen back into the word waters and joined a writing group—i know you were nervous because it was your first writing group ever…i know you were worried about your grammar and that your 8th grade English teacher with her BIG FAT RED pen still loomed large on
Naked
When I first laid bare my personal writing in workshops, I puked before and after each meeting. I’m not talking about exposing my nature poems or opinions on the current state of education—I’m talking about writing with a truth stake driven through its heart. I puked before the meeting, because I had no idea how
My Lovely Affair
My husband and I own a little tugboat, named Annabelle, and no, we didn’t name her, she came that way—which was both swell and uncomfortable at the same time, but there we were. Our idea is to someday live on her, or come the revolution, fly to another world aboard her, but for
all the stories breathe inside us
Five decades ago, Enniscrone, Ireland. I’m in my mother’s arms, my grandmother, next to her, my sister in the arms of my grandfather, my beautiful aunt, next to him, my father behind the camera. The thousands of stories in these arms, these faces, these bodies. intimacies losses betrayals silences horrors triumphs enchantments seeping into
Inevitable.com
Sometimes, when I tell people I met my husband on Match.com they wince and act as if I’ve purchased him from Walmart, as if I’d wandered the aisles looking at shelf after shelf of men, all arranged in eye-catching displays; snazzy dentists wearing sailing shoes, bureaucrats with their sleeves pushed up, biologists rolling their own
Hooray!
Today, a little girl, not more than six years old, came into the bookstore with her mother. While her mother perused the poetry section, the little girl bounced over to me. “Are you a writer?” she asked. “Yes, I am.” “How do you know?” she said, fingering the novels on the shelf next
hail sister mary, full of words
I collect sentences like other people collect action figures, traffic signs or snow globes. The kinds of sentences that knock you out with their cadence and momentum and carry entire worlds on their nouns. The kind that transport you out of body to unlooked-for places and keep you going when things get grim. Sentences like
Write
Write what only you can write about. Write fire. Write glass. Write to release the angel in the marble. Write what can’t be stolen. Write as if no one really knows the definition of art. Write to set the tiniest feeling free. Write as if you remember everything. Write adrift on a raft
Mirror, mirror.
I want to write about the visceral dissonance my head and gut absorb each day as I scroll through images on social media—the pumpkin martini recipes and beheadings in Iran and cute cat videos and acid thrown in children’s faces and new iPhones and thousands of faceless bodies—women and children and men blown to bits,
writing is freedom: my response to recent conversation about abuse and why people stay.
She stayed because she was five-years old and she had a five-year old little girl body and a five-year old little girl voice and she thought five-year old little girl thoughts and felt five-year old little girl feelings. She stayed because she was the sort of little girl who could make art in her mind
When Words Come.
You sit at your desk to write. The house is quiet. There are words pushing to get out, pushing for shape, but you can’t reach them. Yet. You try not to think about facebook, email, instagram, tumbler and twitter where things come fast and easy. Resist this fix. This is your writing day, damn it.
following words
I realized today its been awhile since I just wrote freely without stopping to analyze or deconstruct or judge or punctuate just followed words wherever they went so I did this today for hours I wrote without stopping no form only freedom just wrote loosely without logic words leaking then pouring from fingers just followed
Into calm.
“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” ― May Sarton