First, gratitude, as expressed above. For all the years I’ve been blogging, it’s been more than enough to connect with readers over a wide array of topics, some of which are serious or sad and others that have been lighthearted too. But to have recognition from others, from an editorial panel of really amazing writers [...]
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Posted 25 August 2010
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Wow.
With a great deal of humble gratitude, I report today that I, and nine other fantastic bloggers, have been named a Must-Read Mom by BlogHer and Parenting Magazine for 2010. The announcement came at BlogHer 2010 today in New York, and while I was (very) sadly unable to attend, I am sure the other amazing [...]
Ten reasons why we love you:
1. Your enduring legacy, even among those who never met you.
2. Your beautiful smile.
3. The signs that still come, like the agapanthus blooming this morning in the yard.
4. How each place in my small town holds memories of you: the park, the bus stop, the pool.
5. The stories we tell [...]
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Posted 30 July 2010
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Tagged: Evan
About loss: it doesn’t ever go away. I suppose that’s its very definition, yes? Absence, emptiness, the void. All the opposite of presence, solidity. But the loss of a person isn’t true loss, because there are memories, objects, history, and this, I think, is why loss keeps going and never stops. An earring gone in [...]
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Posted 25 July 2010
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Tagged: Evan
From Joan Didion’s Democracy:
Aerialists know that to look down is to fall.
Writers know it too.
Look down and that prolonged spell of suspended judgment in which a novel is written snaps, and recovery requires that we practice magic. We keep our attention fixed on the wire, plan long walks, solitary evenings, measured drinks at sundown and [...]
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Posted 15 July 2010
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70,000+ words, as of this morning. I have not yet stopped to type a word. Everything visible here, the inch-thick loose leaf, remains handwritten. What a chore that will be, to type it all, but how satisfying to craft an entire draft by hand. I feel positively monkish.
Do I know what it says? Do I [...]
Because, honestly, what’s a birthday without a beach photo?
I bought myself a boogie board last week, in preparation for many planned beach trips this summer. The Girl has decided we must go once a week. No objections here. Because my birthday falls deep in mid-summer, as a kid I never had much in the way [...]
I have an old friend, let’s call him “Jamie,” whom I first met in high school. He is, in fact, one of my oldest and dearest friends, someone who helps me remember that years later I am still somehow the same person I was at fifteen. “Jamie” showed up unannounced at my first marriage on [...]
When I’m busy writing, my reading speeds up too–searches for inspiration have me casting far and wide, looking for characters, voice, structure. This week, I read three books that all contain that rare ability to take the reader’s breath away, giving the writer glimpses of how to do the same.
Amy Bloom is a new discovery [...]
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Posted 30 May 2010
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Tagged: books
Without revealing too much about myself, I will say this: most of my epiphanies about writing come in the shower. It’s there that I recognize the source of a problem, or come to some resolution of a dilemma. Yesterday, in the shower, I realized the difference between writing fiction and nonfiction: nonfiction tells itself in [...]
