Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
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 →
Writing can be isolating. As a story forms itself and finds its way onto the page, as we craft, dismantle, and reassemble it in final form, the work is solitary. At its best, this solitude is glorious--writing is where we can be perfectly alone and let the mind go where it will, where any thoughts... Continue Reading →
Before departing school for the summer, I stopped by the book storage room. A small and musty room of bookshelves adjoining one of the English classrooms, far too many books for the space, piled three deep on the shelves so that you have to shift great tottering piles in order to see what is stacked... Continue Reading →
Some stories seem to move more slowly than drying paint. They elongate scene after scene of a bland character sitting, contemplating, staring at walls. Whole novels can go by without the character doing much more than taking a sip of their watered-down beer as they contemplate the vagaries of their universes. How often do I... Continue Reading →
Over the last year, I have been reading parts of Patience Gray's Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia. Gray traces the food traditions of rural people along Europe's Mediterranean coast, interspersed with stories of the people she met and learned from while she was living in each... Continue Reading →
This last week I participated in an online short story course. One Story's Write a Short Story with Hannah Tinti was an engaging, entertaining, but most of all practically useful one-week course, though which we explored a basic structure for short story writing. This was the first class I've done with One Story, and I... Continue Reading →
In the five years I've lived now here on the west coast of Norway, my inner relationship to this place has changed and grown. When I came, it was a feeling of complete awe that flooded me, as if this were a fairytale place. The natural beauty proclaims itself here. Dramatic shapes of the land,... Continue Reading →
I am writing this afternoon from home in Norway. We made it back on New Year's Eve after a beautiful and wonderful Christmas together with my parents on the island of La Palma. I feel so fortunate to have been able to do this trip. Everyone has now made it home safely, and we'll start... Continue Reading →
The term ended in a flurry of hard work, and winter break has now opened up before us. Instead of going home this year, we have traveled to Spain, first to Madrid to visit friends of my husband's, then on to the Canary Islands off the southern coast of Morocco. In this post I will... Continue Reading →
Words like Trees began two and a half years ago, December of 2018, as a way to build some kind of an online presence for myself and for my writing. I was planning at that time to be applying to MFA programs in the near future, and I was focused on the science-fiction novel I... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 