Sometimes, kids are really just there to teach you not to be a jerk. Kid1 started Kindergarten this year, which involved a school uniform and, among other things, a school bag. Because the bag is uniform, everyone has the same bag. Because everyone has the same bag, the first week or so of pick-up involved […]
Let’s See How Much I Love You Today Read More »
I was trying to think of a story for the Darkness & Good blog the other day, because it’s my turn to post this week, and me and short story ideas are kind of hit and miss sometimes (AH HA HA ALL THE TIME HA HA SOMETIMES HA), and first of all, I ACTUALLY THOUGHT
I’m Never Allowed To Make Mistakes (Also, A Free Short Story) Read More »
Dear Amy, Here’s the thing. You’ve been waffling back and forth over this thing called writing for a long time now, and really, we’ve all had just about enough. You say you want this, that it’s a life ambition, a goal, whatever; you say that it’s impossible to achieve with everything else you have going
Dear Amy: In Which I Berate Myself Politely Read More »
Liana Brooks, twin of my soul if not my actual blood, and I email each other quite a lot. Actually truth be told, I email her more than she emails me, because she is the kind of creature who will send considered emails at sustainable intervals, or else will email me the day’s writing for
Dear Amy: The Preamble Read More »
I know, I know. A lot of conventional wisdom about writing recommends a daily writing habit—for exactly that reason: if you write every day, it becomes a habit. Habits, in this case, are good. But. Conventional wisdom is just that: conventional. It’s often the average of all the options, something that most people can aspire
This Is Your Official Permission To NOT Write Every Day Read More »
Sometimes, when you’re writing, you hit the point where you just want to give up. On the current story, maybe, or maybe even on writing altogether. We’ve all been there, I promise. So this post is for me as much as for anything, and it’s as the title says: bookmark it for when you need
Bookmark This For When You Need Encouragement Read More »
I’ve blogging about this here before, but it can always stand a reprise… Finally, I figured out why it is that I don’t like depressing fiction in any form. I thought about trying to explain this to some of the people that know me in person, but really, it’s a kind of weird, complicated answer
I Don’t Believe In Depressing Fiction (Repost) Read More »
So, this is a lesson I conducted for my seniors literally just now, and it was awesome and thinky and I wanted to share 🙂 We are studying the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and in that context we are looking at the idea of censorship. You don’t have to have read the novel
Are We Self-Censoring Our Way To Dystopia? Read More »
I took nine years of clarinet lessons from elementary school through high school. Of course I was in the band. The band gave concerts, despite the fact that there were times when we sounded pretty awful. We didn’t get paid. If we were lucky, our parents showed up to listen to us perform. There were
Recitals: Practising in Public Read More »
Life has been tumultuous for me in the last couple of months. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here on the blog before or not (sorry if I have!), but there were at least ten days a couple of weeks ago where we had a family disaster or stressful event for every single day.
In The Midst Of Change Read More »
