Annie, my neighbor one block over, bends down to the curved rut running the length of the alley and scrapes a penny out of the sand. She brushes its scratched surface against her blue-jeans, then presses it into my palm. “You’re the lucky one today,” she says. I slip the rough penny into my pants’ […]
I’m in the marketing trenches now, preparing to launch Hannah, which means, strangely, that I’m reading books like Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars and I now actually know what The Long Tail is. The majority of writers reading this will probably think, “Marketing?! I’m not there yet. I’m still in the private stages of
The Story about the Story Revisited Read More »
“I believe in fairies,” Gwyn tells me. “Me, too,” I respond. In our house we tell stories incessantly, and they’re all true. They began with Special Baby, Gwyn’s imaginary friend when she was two years old. Special Baby could do everything Gwyn couldn’t, like go to the library when it was closed and eat extra
Here is one of the secret ironies of being a published author: As you move toward launching a book, your writing life is decimated. Those quiet, searching hours of half-starts and rambling experiments, those blessed days of research and play and discovery, those driving weeks of inspiration—as well as months of paralyzing self-doubt that this
A Writer’s Polar Vortex Read More »
I regularly dream about the church where I grew up: A soaring Protestant-plain structure built in the early 1800’s with a handful of parishioners clustered in the first few pews. I doubt more than twenty people have attended a Sunday service in the last three decades. The congregation was vibrant when I was eight but
Church: The Third Parent Read More »
This Christmas my mother gave me a fantastic, hilarious collection of poems called God Got a Dog. In one, God goes to beauty school, falls in love with nails, and opens a manicure parlor. The poems are deceptively simple. Theologically, they’re out in left field, playing with our notions of holiness and embodiment and images
Pigeon Holes: How Labels Hurt Writers and Writing Read More »
In the days after a fire destroyed a six-bay garage at the ARC Retreat Center as well as three cars, two years’ supply of firewood, and all my belongings, I was numb; I wandered around wearing other people’s clothes trying to remember who I was and what I believed. Had God abandoned me? The ring
Recently I attended a secular conversation at which the word “Source” was batted around the way religious folks use the word “God.” I find “Source” a helpful term, although perhaps not big enough to encompass my sense of divine presence. But it got me thinking: What’s a writer’s source? What grounds us and inspires us?
Silence: A Writer’s Source Read More »
My friend Michael Bischoff gave a talk recently in which he publicly declared his participation in the “cult of personal development.” Like so many of us, Michael strives to be a better person, a better leader, and to help make the world a better place. What could be wrong with that? Of course, a lot
Karen Hering’s new book, Writing to Wake the Soul: Opening the Sacred Conversation Within, hits the bookstores next week, and I want to encourage everyone interested in writing as a spiritual practice to get a copy. In her role as literary minister at a Unitarian Universalist congregation, Hering developed what she calls Contemplative Correspondence, a
A Fresh Look at Writing as a Spiritual Practice Read More »