Tag Archives: fiction writing
Doubt (Pub Cheese Edition)
I ferried my laptop to the kitchen table and brought up my novel-in-progress. A poppy-orange dawn filtered through window blinds and the coffeemaker hiccupped sighs and I relished being the only human in our house awake, tapping the pg dn … Continue reading
It Happens
Washing My Inheritance
My then soon-to-be-husband stated (3rd date, my Echo Park, Los Angeles apartment with the spectacular view I couldn’t afford without working 2 jobs, the last apartment I ever lived in alone): You have a lot of rocks. My Echo Park … Continue reading
SCBWI WWR 9/2017
Me–prepping for the upcoming SCBWI Working Writer’s Retreat: Fortunately I got in, thanks to iphone alerts, Alexa/Echo alerts, the wall calendar with a particular date circled so thickly in red it could never become invisible, no matter the … Continue reading
Ann Patchett’s COMMONWEALTH (In Percentages)
Because Maria Semple stated (in an article I read a few days ago) that she is planning to read Ann Patchett’s new novel, ‘Commonwealth’, I (who had no idea Ann Patchett had a new novel coming out, ‘Bel Canto’ still on my … Continue reading
Remember the Bunnies
WRITER’S RETREAT! Oh, that’s long over now. ‘Tis a distant dream. T’was 2 1/4-ish days of nothing-but-revising, surrounded by foliage, sculpture/fountains and wild bunnies with super white tails. Sequestered in a simple room of my own with a nun’s bed, I … Continue reading
Psychic
Somehow I now live in a neighborhood where the man next door is perfectly okay with hanging a sign from his rented eaves. PSYCHIC SERVICES, the sign declares–bold white on not-so-bold, pretty or eye-catching puce–followed by a phone number. When … Continue reading
Suckers Galore
I’ve read, of late: All The Light We Cannot See, The Luminaries (I sense a pun), Station Eleven, The Orphan Master’s Son (I sense a rhyme–no, it is, it is a rhyme), Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery … Continue reading
Sugar Cookies (‘Is Mars in Retrograde’ Edition)
My son and his dad have a game in which my son pumps his legs hard and gets one of the swings on our creaky set to as high as he can without giving me a heart attack, and my … Continue reading
Fire
We left our drought-socked stifling valley at 815am and by 2pm—Hwy 99 to orchard-heavy back roads with stop signs, to another “highway”, to back roads with stop signs and colonies of slender giants we realized were members of the Stanislaus … Continue reading
Business As Usual, Please
My dad passed away last September, although ‘passed away’ sounds too ‘death-lite’ for the actual event. If you’ve never been at the bedside of someone moving on, all I can say is, it’s probably not possible to brace yourself for the experience. Try … Continue reading
Breaks
What I love about Spring Break? For a week I am Fun Mama–instead of: get dressed, brush your teeth, grab your Spidey hoodie, let’s go, go, go, homework, karate, shower time!, etc. It’s nice to be all: Ooooh—let’s scooter around … Continue reading
Screens
Staring at my writing, I heard what I thought was our younger cat pulverizing the bedroom window’s screen, as he does when he’d like to be let inside, despite the little Hobbiton upside-down-U’s we had cut in pertinent doors, just for … Continue reading
Relief (Death’s Placards Edition)
There are fairly positive placards to be discovered–usually somewhere behind closed eyes–when Death (not waltzes in, there was no waltzing in my dad’s case) knocks down continents to claim, abscond-with, pose in a peasant blouse splotched in redwood forest mulch … Continue reading
Partial Poem For The Day
If thou art worn and hard beset with sorrows that thou wouldst forget, If thou would read a lesson that would keep thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep Go to the Woods and Hills! No tears Dim … Continue reading
Overcast In The Valley
Craving a view, I rode the escalator to the 3rd and final floor of that Macy’s and speculated on valley through tinted windows grand enough for a museum. No thunderheads. Not the merest ribbon of blue sky. No sun. Mounds … Continue reading
Never Fails
Text conversation with my writing mentor as I attempted to send her crucial re-written novel pages before her plane took off, pages I was anxious for her input on so that I could meet a writing deadline ASAP, pages she … Continue reading
Mornings Become Them (Birds Edition)
615am–I get out of bed to let the dog outside and get back in bed forgetting to let the dog back in and he barks and I shoot out of bed not wanting the dog to wake the first grader … Continue reading
I-5 Pretty
In a previous post I regaled our drive from Los Angeles to parts further Northeast known as Tracy, Stockton and Sacramento. Namely, that interminable length from the end of the grapevine to whatever that KABOOM exit is that has Corral in … Continue reading
Spring Break Snoozing (Wide Awake Edition)
During this luscious week of no school for the Kindergartner, we snooze well. Except when we are awakened from chasm-sleep somewhere between 2a.m. and maybe 4:30a.m.—after the bars have closed, but before the rooster across the alley busts its lungs—after we’ve … Continue reading
