IT’S TRUE

It's true that I keep track. I have kept track since I was a girl, and I am officially an old woman now . . . so it’s been a long time. I have noticed for at least fifty years. I stay for the credits in films and search for women among the crew. I …

SHORTLISTED update: ACCEPTED!

A story I am particularly proud of is "shortlisted"—that is, the editors told me they liked it and wanted to hold it longer—with a paying online journal. This particular story had been shortlisted three times before, each time by a journal that pays professional rates and does not allow simultaneous submissions. As a result it …

SHOCKING PINK

I had been reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in the bright pink paperback cover before my drawing class started at 7:30 in the morning. My instructor began screaming at me that the book had ruined his best friend's marriage. Somehow I knew, without knowing, that there had been some other reasons for the …

MY NOVEL

My query-letter pitch: Imperfect Patience*, a literary novel of about 76k words, follows a woman’s odyssey beyond grief. It is a novel of love overwhelming adversity. Thena Justice was building a new life near Seattle after the death of her mother and breakup of a terrible marriage when her former husband murders the neighbor-babysitter and …

#FACEBOOK

My husband and I don't do Twitter. I have a Pinterest account, but no one in our family does the other social media. But for nine or ten years, maybe longer, I was on Facebook. I had over 1600 "friends." They are actual friends, family, former students, former classmates, artists and writers. I began phasing …

HOW TO REVISE

The process of sending written work—stories, essays, poems—to editors and agents who represent authors' work is called "submission." Just now, I am submitting a complete novel. The novel concerns a women who marries unwisely, suffers mightily, and must find a way to remake her life. It might sound like a metaphor for my writing life. …

TWO WEEKS

My mother died in 2007. In 2002 when I was on the other side of the country at a writing workshop, Mom drove the two blocks to the Post Office and realized she was unable to get out of her car. Over the next five years, Mom had surgeries, falls, and was in and out …

A GREAT POEM

I wanted to post this to Facebook, but I am not on Facebook. FOR THE WHITE PERSON WHO WANTS TO KNOW HOW TO BE MY FRIEND Pat Parker       The first thing you do is to forget that I'm black. Second, you must never forget that I'm black. You should be able to dig …

IRRITATING DAY

I won't call it a "bad day" because no one I love died or is in the hospital or lost their job or anything momentous. It was not a cruel day or a day the weather was so ferocious that we didn't get our walk. I walked a couple of miles. I showered this morning. …

SUNDAY SOUP

This will post on a weekday, but it is Sunday as I begin writing. Vegetable parings from the past week are in my cast iron pot on the stove. I am filtering water to pour over onion skins and parsley stems—the trimmings of a week of cooking. It became a habit when I was working …