On Writing
The residency is a classroom at Mineral School
I’m at Mineral School, an artist residency in the town of Mineral, WA (population 200), just off the highway that leads to Mount Rainier. My writing studio and my living space is an old classroom. That’s 800 square feet of classroom, bigger than the apartment my husband and I recently moved into. If I knew…
Read MoreBody image, identity, and sisterhood
Thanks to a grant from 4Culture, I’ve made progress on my next novel. The working title is OFELIA AND NORMA, based on the main characters. The novel grew from my short story “Strong Girls,” which was first published in Calyx in 2008, anthologized in 2016, and included in my short story collection HOLA AND GOODBYE,…
Read MoreWhen a person of color tells conference organizers their conference is too white
You could say I asked for it, that I knew what I was getting into. Still, I went. To the San Miguel de Allende Writers’ Conference. I wrote about it in a previous post. I’d long known about the conference. And I’d long wanted to experience San Miguel de Allende, its picturesque cobblestone streets, its…
Read MoreA Rat Story
Many years ago, I left my laptop open and my younger daughter read the story I happened to be working on. She asked, “Why did you make me a boy in that story.” “It’s not about you,” I answered. Another time she asked why I killed her off in a story. It’s not about you,…
Read MoreA Few of My Notes From Craft Lectures by Chaon, Ligon, Febos, and Proulx
Last week at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, I took notes at the craft lectures I attended. I typed them up, one sentence per line. Some of the sentences began to wander out of order, began to find each other to make these stanza things. I’m not a poet and I apologize to the poets…
Read MoreA Room of My Own Not Far From Home
When you’re waitlisted for the residency you applied for and you’re convinced that being waitlisted is as good as a rejection, you come up with Plan B because your characters are begging for attention, anxious to be nudged from their torpor. So you arrange time off from your day job, secure in the knowledge that…
Read MoreThe Geologies of Us
When I was in college I took a geology class. I learned about igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. I learned about formations and their layers of sand and stone. Whatever their scale – the immensity of a cliff or the insignificance of a pebble – I saw them as inert and objective, separate from or…
Read MoreHotel Christmas
It was my choice to spend Christmas alone. Early Christmas morning my husband flew to L.A. to spend the holiday with our older daughter Natalie. She had just returned from a trip to the Philippines and getting her jetlagged self onto another plane to come to Seattle was out of the question. I’m heading to L.A.…
Read MoreWriting, Pie, and Canoes
I’ve written about the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference before here and here. I’m doing so again. I’ve attended the conference six out of the last eight years. Three of those years I enrolled in one of the full morning workshops – a daily, intensive two and a half hours of manuscript critique or generative writing.…
Read MoreSo I’m Taking This Class
It’s been decades since I’ve taken a weekly class with writing assignments. My days are spent at work in a cubicle downtown, my evenings as much as possible on my writing—right after doing the NYT crossword puzzle online. That little celebratory ditty that plays upon correct completion of the puzzle is a nice reward, but…
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