Notes From the Toolbox
Writing Tangents
In my early morning writing sessions words flow with urgent ease. Today was no different. Then Bam! I dropped my pen. I stopped writing because I caught myself veering into a tangent. Tangents happen. I’ve grown to love them. They often help me drop deeper into my...
A Writer’s Garden
Yaya, my Greek grandmother, was a gardener. The best gardener I’ve ever seen. She loved fresh cut flowers in her house. Her backyard was so overrun with flowering plants— even in the fall something was in bloom— only a tiny patch of grass was visible in the center,...
Anything Can Happen
Writing is momentum. When I allow my hand to run across the page— driven solely by what Natalie Goldberg calls Wild Mind— anything can happen. It’s why I show up. Why I’ve always shown up. The first to arrive and the last to leave because I couldn’t risk missing out....
Unicorns, Pink Elephants & Storytelling
My college spending money was earned by working as a counselor for a Girl Scout camp in Michigan. Summers at camp were the best way to burn off the drudge of the academic year: ghost stories around the campfire, cheeks exhausted from laughing at the shenanigans of...
QUICHOTTE, DON QUIXOTE and Me
“The death of Don Quixote felt like the extinction in all of us of a special kind of beautiful foolishness, an innocent grandeur, a thing for which the world had no place, but which one might call humanity.” Quichotte by Salman Rushdie is a delightful modern retelling...
Snow Queen
This picture sits in the window above my writing desk, displayed in a glass frame of pressed wildflowers— my favorite. I love this little girl whose white blonde hair makes me think of Ice Palaces, Snow Queens and Magic. Her full-wattage smile— a celebration of how...