My neighbor told me a story last year and it’s my favorite in a long time. In short, one afternoon many years ago, my neighbor ‘Jay’ and some friends went to a park in the desert. There were rattlesnake warnings on the roads leading in, unfamiliar dangers to the
If you hang around me long enough, you'll find me repeating myself. This might be a holdover from teaching high school and echoing the same catchphrases over and over to help my students build routines—teachers know that sweet victory of having your mannerisms and sayings mimicked. Things
A note: These are sometimes feelings. I woke up today ready to write some words on a project I haven’t been able to get back to for awhile. A past version of me would have spent the morning unspooling stories from the spinning wheel of my mind, marveling at
this piece came from a workshop curated and led by BEE LB, who is fantastic. do all the things with them pls. If there’s another me, she’s louder. When Alirio blushed and balked as the bottle slowed to a stop, she blew him a kiss across the circle
This is another piece from Unfold last year — get yourself in already! after Dean Young I can’t write a poem because I’m supposed to I can’t write a poem because I am standing on my tongue I’ve plucked my eyes out of their sockets and tossed
I never feel like I’m going to be That Writer. Every now and then, a literary-minded friend will share a call for submissions or an application to a writing residency with me and I’ll think, ‘Wrong number.’ It’s not even an “I’ll never be good enough”
This post includes photos of a zine I made during a Zine Lunch class led by Kristen Gentry. Zine Lunch is free and very fun, and Kristen's prompts and guidance were wonderful. You can watch the class for free here! I think a lot about failure. Too much,
This vignette has been simmering on the back burner for years. I dug into it a bit during Unfold (led by the phenomenal Tristan Richards) and found my way back to it the other day. It's forever in progress and always on the chopping block as I continue
This creative nonfiction piece came out of a prompt from one of Nina Hart's Creativity Chats. We should be able to see the whole thing, our neighbors tell us when we bump into them on an evening walk. No light pollution to speak of out here, the whole
I’m over success stories. If you’ve defied odds and come out on top, I think you should be proud. And you should share your story. But I’m tired of being handed those stories as the ultimate motivation. The daily doodle account that accumulated 100k followers in 8
I am my most beautiful alone. Which is to say, I’m most beautiful through my own eyes. I’m also my ugliest through those eyes, those that have been trained to look for it (the ugliness), to find it (the contrast), to hate it (me). I have all the
Write Start kicks off on January 7th! 30 days of prompts, live sessions, reflection and mindset work, and a 1:1 call with me so you can write more in 2024. Details and sign up here. The first time someone told me that they always read the end of the
Just put it out with the recycling on a Thursday. As if I’d waste a chance at time travel on something so squishy and unstable, and for what? To stare at it in its display case, admire its calloused armor for a few minutes before drifting away to find
“I want to know what’s true, not what’s beautiful.” – Hannah Grieco A lot of writers I work with and talk to are concerned about being messy. And they should be. They're not messy enough. I’m a big advocate of mess in the writing process, from
Today I feel like giving up. This is not some kind of announcement. It’s just a thing I go through, and I know I’m not alone. So many writers and artmakers do the same, in the lonely, mismatched way we do things. Shrugging at the oncoming wave &
You do not have to have all of the answers. You do not have to say the same things you used to. You can change your mind (it's part of learning). You do not have to make everyone else comfortable — it's impossible, and we can be
I wrote this while my husband and I were in the process of preparing to move from NYC to Yucatán and condensing all of our belongings down to what would fit in six suitcases. It was a lot. It's still difficult for me to write about or even
I wrote this in a workshop from Reclaim Your Voice led by Jungle Flower and it surprised me. The prompt came in two parts: Write a letter to your body (something I've done many times) and write a letter from your body. I'd never done that
I've been playing with pieces of this for a few months, just shuffling them around and trying to see where and how they might fit. This part of the process is like casting the bones, reading the possibilities. I don't know if this is "it,
This poem came out of a Poetry Xfit event with SAFTA. They happen once a month and are free and fun and hard. I always leave them feeling like I stretched and pushed. You should check it out some time! The poem here is one of so many stories I
This came out of a prompt from M. Tamara Cutler's substack, That Place You Love. It's an interesting and engaging community of storytelling, and when I manage to open my emails close to when I receive them, I'm always excited to see where her
I think myself a loner. I'm used to the story that I am misunderstood and aloof, hard to get close to, off-putting, etc. And while most social situations are deeply stressful for me and nothing is ever one thing, I do love a lot about writing with other
I won't start with apologies and you shouldn't either, I think. And apologies aren't just sorries. You don't always have to explain why you're here and why you matter.