“I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.” —Octavia Butler Been thinking a lot about motherhood lately. I don’t have kids, but you know […]
Sometimes I think about dead careers. Like lamplighters, for instance. Did they envision an electric future where no one would need to tend streetlights? Did they all heave a collective sigh when the first bulbs went mainstream? See their demise in the long shadows of the lampposts? As a content writer for brands and a […]
I avoided it for years. My four older brothers used to talk about it at family gatherings in reverential tones; discuss every white-lipped utterance flung from Al Pacino’s lips; hum the score like a dirge throughout the house; expound on the virtues of Parts I and II and deride the third. I’m speaking, of course, […]
I’ve always been very jealous of people who know stuff about things. People who can rattle off stats and facts; people who have more than a shadowy inkling of historical events (Napoleon…was short…?). For purely scientific reasons, I want to crack open their skulls and look at their brains: do they have more gray matter […]
I would like to write a very strongly-worded letter to every institution of higher education I’ve ever attended and ask them why I’ve never been made to read Alice Munro. It’s a name I’ve heard, for sure. I worked at an independent bookstore for five years (my longest held employment – go figure) and patrons […]
Ya’ll familiar with Theseus’s Paradox? Quick philosophical set-up: Theseus was all about adventuring on his great wooden ship, right? Well, after he dies, the Athenians keep the ship as an homage. As the years go by, it begins to rot. The people of Athens replace each piece of rotten wood with a fresh plank until […]
This week, I decided to spend time reading “well regarded” writers, whatever the hell that means. Mostly, I just tried to think of lit that I’d been forced to reach in high school English classes. Hemingway came to mind, but I was not in the mood for his boundless machismo. And you know how I […]
It’s that time again. That new moon time. That oversharing-with-strangers about my witchiness time. And not a moment too soon. Towards the end of a lunar cycle, right before the moon hides her face for a night, I generally find myself yearning to do the same. When I think about all my unmet goals and […]
Last Sunday, I really wanted two things out of a read: thoughtful descriptions of nature, and a genuine love story. I haven’t been reading much fiction lately (been catching up on my style guide game). And the last short story I’d read was the dreary, drab, and emotionally bleh “Architectural Salvage” by Will Self. So I wanted […]
You know how to tell it’s time to leave the house and find another place to write? Out of nowhere you notice that there’s a build up of grime on the crooked upper elbow of the pipe under your bathroom sink. Are you really a bad enough person to keep WRITING at this juncture – […]