inspired to be ourselves
Their house is a gaudy yellow and green cottage, set on a high corner amid vacant lots and neglected buildings, a bright dory hauled up on a landwash of rubble and ruin. Being in it is tonic for me. It reminds me of Newfoundland: clapboarded houses tarted up with leftover boat paint, color combinations that […]
I wrote this post last January, on my poetry blog. I remembered it the other day when I read this wonderful post by Mme. Kennedy about slogging through the creative doldrums. I’d like to re-dedicate it to all the NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo warriors out there, headed into the home stretch this week. Yes, even you crazy NaMoShoeBlo’s. You go. Several years ago, I […]
(Sorry I managed to screw up posting two weeks in a row. But my computer BROKE yesterday. New computer today! Yay.) My mom is over 80. She recently got a letter in the mail from someone she had gone to grammar school with. The letter was from a woman, Jill, who had been in the […]
As people who follow me at Notes already know, it has been a stressful and uncertain time for my husband and I these past several months. His fledgling freelance graphic design business went through a slow period, and our ship began taking on water. We have been listing badly. “It’s expensive to not have enough […]
A few weeks ago I promised to write a post every Thursday. I made it two weeks before I screwed up. I think that is mighty Flawed of me, but I won’t beat myself up about it too badly. Back before the Internet, before blogging, before PostSecret, there was The Sun Magazine’s “Readers Write” […]
Teen writers share where they find inspiration. Songwriters share where they find inspiration. I find Anne Lamott to be very inspiring. I love this “I am a Loser” speech given by the winner of the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Finally, Sarah Vowell is a super hero.
A few months after my middle child was born, I was roped into participating in The Artist’s Way, a 12-step creativity recovery program developed by Julia Cameron. The book had been calling my name ever since I’d picked it off out of my mother’s bookshelf on a visit home, a year or two before. I’d […]
