Category: writing workshop notes

  • Power Outage, August 20, 2019 I like the sound of the cars, passing lonely on the rainy afternoon street, the way the sound of the rain rises up like a wave crashing, then falls softly to patter. I like the way the Catalpa dances, tossing her branches like girls toss long hair. I wait for…

  • “Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —James Baldwin I was struck this morning by the feelings that came up in a fastwrite about childhood. After reading it over, then turning to a review of recent news, I felt the endless echo of bullying and…

  • (Following is an excerpt from my novel, The Last Butterfly, that I’m workshopping this week at Colgate University in New York…feeling excited to reconnect with these characters…finally going to finish my edits/plot-hole fixes! It’s told in the voice of Luna, a 15 year old who lives in the deadzone of what was once central Indiana,…

  • Write about a time you were rocked and felt held

    Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Feel your shoulders relax. Remember a time you were held, and rocked. Or a time you held someone, and rocked them. Any time you felt safe, held. Begin there.

  • Write about a time there were flowers…

    plump smell, like baby skin, blooming so beautiful so smooth (everyone says so)

  • Dear 19-year-old Me, You were SO excited, do you remember? I mean, you were on the move and it wasn’t New York, or even Chicago—but it was somewhere—another state, albeit in the absolute wrong direction, away from the coast, even further from the Atlantic you dreamed of living near one fine day. I’m writing to…

  •   Today in workshop: coloring back in time In today’s Amherst Artists & Writers workshop, we finished with a prompt rooted in mindfulness and childhood memory.  Here’s how it goes: you choose a few crayons from a big bowl, make sure everyone has drawing paper, and together we all breathe in the smell of the…

  • in this one, you’re…

    In this one, you are standing by the old canal at Holcolm Gardens. The sun has made your hair catch fire, the sun is coating your tanned legs and long arms with a honeyed light, and for some silly reason lost to me now, you are holding up a big red box of Cheetos, holding…

  • (short fiction) Heartshaped Vaguely heartshaped, that’s how you described her face, and I always imagined her—with my child’s-eye, literal imagining—as having a face the color of a pink valentine’s candy heart, a face with a pointy chin and also big eyes made of chocolate, because you said hers were brown and melty. That’s how I…

  • a letter from my worry stone

    Another day, another prompt. Today I let my worry stone do the writing. Find something or choose someone, and let them write to you. See what happens. Dear E, Finally. I get to tell you my worries. About damn time. Our relationship, up until now, has been entirely one way. From that moment on the…