Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
I post these updates on Words like Trees on Sundays, but I write them on Saturdays. I'm not a procrastinator. It makes me anxious to have things hanging over me. But today, it's Sunday. My post won't have been written yet by the time I normally would have liked it scheduled to appear. The reason... Continue Reading →
I need to keep today's post short. I'll confess, as time goes on, my posts on Words Like Trees become shorter and shorter. Perhaps this is because I have other writing projects going; I haven't found it easy of late to fit blogging into my writing time. At the end of a two-week break from... Continue Reading →
I avoided Covid-19 for nearly three years, but it has finally caught up with me. On Tuesday night, I began feeling a tingle in my throat. Wednesday resembled the beginnings of a cold. My fever began Thursday. It wasn't until Friday, though, when I heard that one of my colleagues had tested positive, that I... Continue Reading →
Routines get upended during the holidays. My eight-month-old nephew, who is so sweet, has had his routines disrupted this last week by the Christmas festivities, as well as by his visiting and overly-excited uncles. He gets cranky. He refuses to go down for a nap. I've been privately saying to him, "I'm with you, mister!"... Continue Reading →
For the last two years, I have been setting strategic writing goals for myself to help me keep moving in the direction I want to go. My writing goals in 2021 helped me increase productivity and direct my energies towards the parts of my writing work that felt most important. In 2022, I updated my... Continue Reading →
In my English literature class this term, we have been working on writing theme statements. When we read the two novellas in Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen, we wrote something like this: "Yoshimoto expresses the idea that we can move towards healing from grief by forming human relationships and seeking acceptance." The theme statement helps us wrap... Continue Reading →
I need to keep it short this weekend. This weekend I'm meeting with my writing group and have stories of theirs to read and comment on. And then I've signed up for another writing class that I'm doing over this weekend, about short story beginnings, also through One Story, since I had such a good... Continue Reading →
In this busy autumn term at school, I've been taking time to write when I can. I have a daily goal of devoting 85 minutes to my writing each day (and I include in that time blogging here on Words Like Trees, sending out story submissions, meeting with my writing group, as well as my... Continue Reading →
I can't stop taking scenery pictures. When a vista opens up before me, when the sky clears out crystal-blue, when birch trees turning yellow catch the light, I my phone emerges from my pocket. I say to myself, remember this moment, and I snap a picture. Hundreds of these landscapes appear on my phone. I... Continue Reading →
One of the things I love about teaching literature is the way its central questions push my thinking. Usually teacher-Jimmy and writer-Jimmy inhabit distinct mental spaces, but sometimes the two dovetail alongside. With the start of the new school year, meeting new students, lesson planning, checking how advisees are settling in, I got to have... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 